The Apsara and the Stone
—a poem by Lucas Varro
There dwelt a maid of temple grace,
her steps once carved in flight—
she danced no more through time or space,
but waited, veiled in night.
Her fingers poised in curving air,
her gaze cast down in stone—
she yearned for one who once stood there,
but now she danced alone.
He was a guardian hewn of gold,
a sentinel, wise and still,
whose arms had once the heavens held,
yet bound by timeless will.
She loved him through the roots of years,
through lichen, rain, and flame—
whispered songs no soul could hear,
and traced his hidden name.
One dusk beneath the sacred fig,
when even winds lay hushed,
she touched his brow with trembling light—
and into stone she rushed.
Her shadow wove within his form
as petals graced the shrine;
temple walls grew warm with song
no lips would dare define.
They never speak, they never move—
yet stones remember clear
the breath of one apsara,
her presence woven here.
And once each year, when moonlight parts
the gate where lions wait,
they step from walls with silver hearts—
and dance beyond all fate.
Also in Library
Stone That Remembers the Sky
This poem listens to Angkor not as ruin, but as grammar—where moss, shadow, and proportion carry devotion forward without spectacle. What endures here is not glory, but measure: a way of standing that no longer needs witnesses.
Rice-Ghost and the Seven Drums
At harvest, the danger is not hunger but forgetting how to listen.
This folklore retelling speaks of drums struck for silence, of grain taken without gratitude, and of a narrow figure who does not punish—only waits. A tale of pacts made not with spirits, but with attention itself.
Naga Vow
A lost city sleeps in the jungle, its thresholds carved with serpents — not ornament, but law. This vow-poem enters love as sacred hunger: desire as guardianship, devotion as possession, the body speaking without language. A liturgy of heat, roots, rain, and the terrible tenderness of being claimed.
