I stood upon the vastness of your sleeping form,

a speck of ink on a page of white sand—

you who had become the dunes themselves,

stretching out in curves I could not yet name.

Your spine was a ridge I dared to walk,

your stillness a heavy, silent gravity,

and I—only a shadow cast by my own longing,

learning how small I truly am before you.

We do not see ourselves as we are,

but as we think the other wishes us to be—

sculpting our edges to fit their hands,

carving away the parts that might hurt them.

I wondered if you felt me there,

this tiny weight upon your earth-born back,

or if I was just another grain of dust

settling into the landscape of your dreams.

Did you dream of me differently?

Did you imagine me softer, taller, less afraid?

Or did you wish for me to disappear entirely,

so you could rest without the burden of being seen?

And I—did I stand there to love you,

or to prove I was worthy of the ground I walked?

A silhouette shaped by borrowed light,

trying to convince the valley that I belong.

The sky above offered no answers.

It only watched as we became each other's mirror—

you, the terrain that holds my wandering,

me, the question mark upon your skin.

Night deepened. The wind moved through the air

like fingers tracing something half-remembered.

I did not step down. I did not speak.

Some truths are only known in silence.

We are both the giant and the small one,

both the desert and the one who walks it—

shaping ourselves to fit the other's dream,

until we forget which shape was ours to begin with.

And still—you breathed. And still—I stood.

Two mysteries leaning into the same darkness,

where love is not knowing, but becoming,

where the path is made by walking together.