Before Seeing / After Leaving

Some places are entered before the body arrives,
and remain standing after it leaves.

I have not been there,
and yet something in me is already tired from walking.

I know the colour of stone at dawn
without having earned it.

I imagine corridors that cool the air
by remembering water.

I imagine doorways
that do not hurry you.

Sometimes the longing arrives
as a weight in the chest,
sometimes as relief—
as if a life elsewhere
were quietly continuing
without me.

I want to stand where devotion
was once an ordinary task,
where hands learned patience
by touching the same surface
for centuries.

I want to be smaller
without being diminished.

I want to look at the world
long enough
that it forgets
I am watching.

I have been there,
and now everything else asks less of me
than it should.

I walk streets that function perfectly
and feel almost accused.

Stone taught me a different pace—
one that does not improve,
only deepens.

I remember light entering halls
as if it were allowed,
as if it had waited.

The absence is not dramatic.
It is precise.

A quiet pressure behind the ribs,
the sense that something essential
has remained upright
somewhere else.

I return in fragments:
breath slowing,
footsteps choosing silence,
attention becoming a form of care.

I am careful now
with what I give myself to—
knowing how easily
a place can take you whole,
and leave you
remembering how.