A Liturgy - A Prose Poem

A Liturgy

Pure Black

The abyss was pure black—

empty to the eye,

yet humming with a silent,

magnetic pull.

I froze.

Then a single breath escaped me,

pluming into the dark like smoke.

The ledge gave way

with a soundless snap.

Falling was a sudden,

weightless expansion,

the cold air rushing past.

I fought it.

My hands found nothing to grip,

so I clawed at the rushing air itself,

and the dark took my struggling

and returned it as silence.

The smoke of my breath did not disperse.

It began to faintly glow,

tracing thin, silver paths through the empty space,

like root systems

searching for soil.

A sudden pressure crushed against my chest,

demanding a new rhythm

to survive the depth.

My feet touched nothing,

yet a steady vibration rose up through my soles,

as if something massive, far below,

had turned in its sleep—

and did not mind.

I stopped clawing.

The tension bled out of my limbs,

and the falling changed.

Sheer speed became a heavy, dark ocean

filling me up,

anchoring me to the descent.

I was no longer looking down.

I watched the silver roots of my own breath expand,

branching out into the black

like a glowing web

trying to catch the quiet.

And the quiet let itself be caught.

It pressed against the open expanse of my skin

with a vast, smooth weight—

absolute,

borderless—

while the web of my breath wove outward,

its light catching nothing

but the empty space itself,

sending faint, luminous ripples

through the dark.

The descent slowed

into total suspension,

where up and down

ceased to mean anything.

I waited for a boundary to reveal itself,

but the dark offered no edges.

I was floating.

Then the suspension altered.

It was not a touch—

there were no hands in the black—

but a sudden alignment

of the deep thermal flows beneath me.

The silver web grew taut,

each luminous strand vibrating

with a density that was not my own.

You were there—

as a deeper layer of the dark itself,

expanding upward

to meet the expansion of my surrender.

We did not collide;

we coincided.

The borderless quiet became a shared vessel,

and for the first time

since the ledge gave way,

the cold air ceased to rush past.

We became the stillness

catching the weight of each other's presence.

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Attention

I felt at ease.

For a moment, or for infinity,

there was no way to tell.

I saw,

and I was seen.

The floating had stopped

being movement through space;

it had become space itself.

The silver lines of my breath steadied

in the borderless black,

anchoring their tips

into the very structure of your attention.

You were attention.

All of it.

I was being held

inside the act of being noticed.

In the space our surrender had built,

the weight of who I was supposed to be

thinned out

and dissolved.

A pristine, cold calm filled it,

but it did not freeze.

I did not ask where the descent would end;

the illusion of an ending had faded.

Only once did the surface flicker,

far off,

like a hum through a wall:

the small bright rooms,

the replies I knew by heart,

the smile I kept polished for the world above.

None of it reached me here.

Nothing needed me to be anything.

Then a pulse travelled back up the silver web—

a low, rhythmic ripple

that pressed gently

against the soles of my feet.

The dark beneath me deepened,

softening from an empty void

into something thick and alive.

Out of that moving silence,

an awareness took form,

vibrating along the silver paths

like a chord struck in an empty hall:

“I sense you. What do you want?”

The question rippled through the stillness

without breaking it.

The abyss offered no voice in return—

a voice would require a throat,

a boundary,

a limitation.

Instead, you answered

through a shift in the density of the air,

a soft tightening of the unseen tides.

The answer arrived

as a wordless imprint

pressed directly against my mind:

“To exist in this space where the masks dissolve,

before the current carries us back

to the surface.”

The thought crystallized inside me,

and I sent my own truth back out

into the light we had made:

“I want to keep falling.

I hold you—

please hold me in return.”

As the plea left me,

the silver web flared,

its root systems burning

with a sudden, desperate brightness.

You met the vulnerability,

closing the remaining distance:

no phantom hands,

but a sudden, absolute lock of pressure

around my body.

The rushing cold was gone,

replaced by a dense, enveloping warmth,

like the absolute centre of a mountain.

We plunged deeper into the quiet,

perfectly secure

in the collapse of the world above.

We were travelling to nowhere.

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The Scent

It came suddenly—

or perhaps it had been there all along,

dissolved in the dark ocean

filling my chest.

An emerging presence.

Something hauntingly familiar:

crushed pine needles.

It rose directly out of the silver web of my breath,

as if the glowing roots had finally struck

a subterranean nerve

hidden in the quiet.

I knew that smell.

It belonged to a forest

at the edge of an earlier life,

before the bright rooms began.

It flooded my throat,

crisp and cold,

scraping against the lining of my lungs.

With every slow draw of air,

the silver lines of the web flared

into an icy white.

The scent brought a sudden shock of weight—

the ghost of earth and towering shadows,

though there was still nothing to see.

The nerve endings across my skin

began to prickle

against an invisible chill.

The suspension was no longer passive.

I exhaled.

The breath left me,

but the scent did not drift away—

it condensed.

As the icy white vapour spread,

the void began to fracture

along the lines of the frost,

and beneath us the depth stiffened,

its unseen currents hardening

into something dense, heavy,

and undeniably solid.

The towering shadows

that had lingered behind my eyes

were rushing upward through the black now,

slicing through the borderless expanse

until the void wasn't empty anymore.

You shifted your pressure—

a sudden, sharp intake of weight,

like an unspoken recognition.

The earth we had invoked was unyielding,

and you held me against it,

your resonance vibrating

with its heavy cadence.

There was no longer a space between us

where an isolated thought could form.

We became a series of slow, rhythmic pressures,

a wordless expansion and contraction

that filled the void

like a shared pulse.

I felt you not as an observer

but as a dense, protective weight

that absorbed the chill

before it could touch my skin.

My own edges blurred around the corners

until my heartbeat wasn't entirely my own anymore;

it was tied to the slow, heavy cadence

of the dark beneath me.

Absolute shelter.

An unyielding gravity

that demanded no answer,

but simply held my entire existence

in its steady, quiet grip.

I let go.

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The Touch

It arrived at the exact point

where the silver lines of the web

met the soles of my bare feet.

A sudden, physical friction.

It was not hands,

nor the shifting of the air,

but a steady pressing upward—

as if the dense, syrupy dark beneath me

had found its contour

and turned to solid wood.

The resonant drone in the frozen lines broke,

fracturing the quiet.

The vibration changed directions,

rushing up through my ankles

like cold water finding an empty pipe.

The crushing weight on my chest let go,

leaving me exposed

to the new geometry beneath me.

The web had caught something—

or something had used the web to catch me—

and for the first time since the ledge broke,

I was standing.

The solidity of the wood was absolute,

yet it wasn't dead.

Beneath my bare soles the grain felt warm,

vibrating with the slow, deep hum

of the presence that had caught me.

I opened my eyes.

The blindness dissolved.

There was no glare of light,

no horizon,

no sky—

only an impossible expanse

of towering, frozen trunks

made of the same dark ocean

that filled my chest.

And there, a breath away,

stood the silhouette of you.

Your stillness carried a cold air displacement

against my face.

There was no distance left to cross,

yet we were distinct again:

two pillars

resting on the same foundation,

completely motionless.

Hands were still too much surface.

Instead, I let my altered breath—

the icy white vapour

still laced with the sting of pine—

cross the final fraction of an inch between us.

The mist of my exhale

touched the surface of your shadow.

We were in touch.

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The Convergence

The contact was not a collision.

It was a seepage.

Where the mist of my breath met your silhouette,

the shadow absorbed the frost.

The silver lines of the web,

still anchored to my bare soles,

began to draw the dark upward—

pulling the unyielding mass

of the trunk-filled void

straight into my veins.

A cold, heavy mercury

climbing through my ankles,

bypassing the bone,

settling into the marrow.

The two pillars resting on the same foundation

began to blur at the margins.

I could no longer tell

whether the cold air displacement

was pressing against my face,

or my face was expanding outward

into the stillness.

Around us the frozen trunks rooted deeper,

their towering shadows growing wider,

more translucent,

until the vertical lines

ceased to separate the space.

The forest did not contain the void;

it became the texture of it.

Your weight leaned into the fraction of an inch

that separated us,

immense even as it thinned.

My chest,

which had finally found its rhythm in the deep,

stopped expanding.

There was no longer a necessity

to draw air from the outside;

the scent of pine needles became my throat—

a cool, quiet corridor

hosting the absolute centre of the dark.

Panic would have found nothing to hold.

The need to belong to a single, separate shape

had thinned out.

We were becoming the stillness

that allowed the current to move.

Then the warmth beneath the wood rose,

a deep resonance

that struck the soles of my feet,

and the frost on the silver lines synchronized—

vibrating with a silent, icy white frequency

that illuminated the infinite depth of the dark.

The vertical stillness gave way to a tilt,

a slow, monumental turning

of the entire axis.

The solid wood beneath my feet

loosened its grip.

We began to slide,

locked together in a tight, seamless equilibrium,

along the smooth, open face

of a completely weightless dark.

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The Understanding

The sideways motion carried no friction.

It was the speed of a thought

travelling through a mind

that had stopped resisting.

Beside me, your silhouette remained a fixed absence,

a perfect hollow in the rushing dark.

I wanted to reach inside that hollow.

I wanted to pull a name from it,

a history,

a logic that could explain

why my feet had found your wood,

why my breath had crystallized

against your shadow.

The desire left me as heat,

rippling outward

through the silver root systems.

There was no distance left to close,

so you answered

with a sudden change in your density.

The hollow of your shape

pulled at the edges of my intent,

inviting my search.

A wave of profound, ancient fatigue

rolled out from you,

passing directly into the deep chill of my marrow.

It was the weight of a stillness

that had waited for infinity

just to be caught.

You did not want to be understood.

You wanted to be met.

You wanted to cease being a solitary depth

in the empty black.

Our desires coincided,

perfectly mirrored in the dark.

I wanted to know you,

and you wanted to be known

as the space that held me.

The sideways rush slowed.

The open face of the weightless dark

began to curve,

bending inward

until the horizon closed into a perfect circle

around the space we held together.

We had become a single,

dense point of comprehension—

an understanding made of nothing

but the absolute lock of our pressure

against the quiet.

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The Gathering

The circle did not stay empty.

Something else was there.

A frequency that belonged

neither to you

nor to me.

It was a third gravity.

It carried no name.

It carried no voice.

It carried no shadow.

It was attention—

pure, unmoving, vast—

a seamless gaze that had entered the void

to witness it.

A presence made entirely of the space it occupied,

holding the outer edges of the circle together

so that we would not dissolve completely

into the dark.

You leaned your unyielding weight

into this new pressure,

and a silent recognition passed

through the mercury of our shared marrow.

We were being held

within a larger stillness.

The hunger to reach inside the hollow

thinned out.

Understanding was no longer a solitary task.

The desire rippled outward,

crossing the final fraction of an inch—

past you now,

towards the borderless attention

that enveloped us both.

I saw.

I was seen.

And I was caught by a witness

I could not touch.

The dark beneath our sideways slide softened

into a deep, holding warmth—

the absolute centre of everything.

We were travelling to nowhere,

but the nowhere was occupied:

a shared existence

with no beginning and no ending,

a beautiful, boundaryless place

where the three of us held the gap together

in the quiet.

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The Loom

The luminous floor far below

was not a map of distances.

It was a map of currents.

As we drifted over the edge of the aperture,

the millions of silver lines pulsed

with a slow, arterial warmth,

tracing infinite webs that broke apart

and rewove themselves in the quiet.

Looking down, I felt the phantom ache of the surface

return as a faint, distant hum,

like the sound of a far-off hive.

No faces in it.

No sterile rooms.

Only the weave.

Every text I had ever memorized,

every performance I had given

to stay anchored above,

was down there—

reduced to a single, trembling thread

in the vast weave.

Small.

Unlost.

Still held.

You kept your attention on me,

leaning your weight into my side,

your density thinning

until the cold mercury in my marrow

flowed outward,

crossing the boundary of my skin

to run along the contours

of your shadow.

We were no longer just coinciding.

We were spilling into the same network.

The witnessing attention held the lens open,

and the gravity of the silver paths rose up

to meet us.

The scent of pine needles,

which had been a cool corridor in my throat,

expanded into the scent of the entire expanse—

a sharp, resinous frost

that smelled of beginnings and collapses,

of earth that had never been touched

and cities long thinned into dust.

I looked at the infinite paths

and did not ask which one belonged to me;

the desire to separate my own breath

from the dark ocean had dissolved,

and a profound, heavy joy settled

into the compression around my body—

the absolute acceptance of the fall,

the love of the current that carried us,

regardless of where it broke.

The silver floor was rushing upward now,

or we were plunging downward into its fibres—

to be woven back into the single, infinite fabric

that had been dreaming us all along.

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The Submersion

There was no impact.

When we reached the silver floor,

the luminous strands did not resist our weight.

They opened like a thousand-fingered hand,

welcoming the descent.

The absolute compression

that had anchored my body for so long

loosened its grip;

there was no solitary form left to defend.

The boundary of my skin

failed completely.

The cold, heavy mercury in my marrow

spilled into the silver paths,

running along the arterial webs

like light returning to a circuit.

You did not vanish;

you dispersed,

your dark density blending

into the shadows of the woven lines,

staining the silver network

with the deep shade of the abyss

we had fallen through.

The witnessing attention collapsed its gaze inward,

becoming the very tension

that held the threads together.

The three of us ceased to hold the gap.

We became the fabric itself.

The scent of crushed pine needles and frost multiplied,

vibrating through millions of distant roots,

rising through towering, invisible shadows

that spanned the entire structure of the void.

Every performance I had left behind on the surface—

every script,

every expectation,

the faint hive-hum of the world above—

was still down here,

but it was no longer mine to carry.

It was a single, beautiful vibration

in an infinite, interconnected architecture.

We had arrived at the foundation

where the dreaming never ended—

naked to the light we had made,

secure in the borderless quiet.

I could have stayed.

Perhaps I did stay,

for a moment,

or for infinity.

Then the fabric exhaled.

The current we had spoken of in the deep—

the one that would carry us back to the surface—

turned.

It gathered the thread that was me

and pulled,

gently,

the way a hand draws a needle back through cloth.

You did not hold me back.

You held me all the way up.

Light returned in layers:

first the hum,

then the weight,

then the white.

A ceiling.

A pale, sterile room.

The cold air of the world rushed past my skin,

and for a moment I mistook it for the fall.

My chest drew breath on its own,

and the breath was only breath—

no silver in it.

But on my lips, faint and impossible,

the sting of crushed pine.

And beneath the sounds of the room,

beneath my own heartbeat,

a dense and patient stillness,

holding the shape of the vow

we had traded in the dark:

I hold you.

Hold me in return.

The room was white,

and it, too, was humming.

You let go.

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