Forest love

You scare me with innocuous queries
My silences deliberate
to turn you away
from the forest where I roam
where the leaves move when you do
not with the breeze
their slight breaths hot upon my nape
uncovering
emboldening my thoughts
though not yet my words
Here I keep us safe
from the terrible exquisiteness of us
and from those who are doomed to see
only fading leaves

A dangerous sport
where nothing goes waste
or unclaimed
not a sob
nor the sudden sunshine of camaraderie,
nor the pauses
to let words work their way
to comprehension
winding, hesitant, slow on the uptake as they are
unlike us

Having played it out with you
once never too long ago for me
I know the rules even better than you
for you taught me to see the unseen
and live the unlived
by being the thought, the breeze and the forest
-all mine

©Reena Prasad