The Causeway, Remembered
Some thresholds are not crossed once.
They are carried.
Causeway
The road narrows.
Then the light.
Water on either side
holds the sky.
The body slows
without instruction.
Stone does not open.
It waits.
Your shoulders lower.
You did not tell them to.
Inside, distance lengthens.
Breath slows.
Figures in shadow,
mid-gesture,
balance undecided.
Movement has not happened—
and yet the air knows.
You step back.
Out of courtesy.
Rain arrives.
Leaves.
You carry away
a change in weight.
What Remains of the Causeway
Not the stone.
Not the water.
The slowing.
The way the body
learned to wait
without being told.
Light resting
where it fell.
Time
unshouldered.
You stood.
That was enough.
Now—
elsewhere—
rooms move too quickly.
Yet sometimes
your foot hesitates.
Your breath
does not follow at once.
The causeway exists.
You know this.
What is gone
is the measure
that held you
and let you remain.
Also in Library
Where a Name Could Not Follow
A boy in the sandstone quarries beneath Phnom Kulen learns the first law of sacred building: not strength, not speed, but attention. Where a Name Could Not Follow imagines the life of an unnamed Angkorean stone-master whose hands helped move mountain into temple — and whose name vanished where the stone endured.
The Apsara Against the Assembly Line
In the darkroom, the print rises slowly from the tray: silver darkening into shadow, stone gathering itself from blankness. At Angkor, the apsaras offer the same lesson. Though repeated in their thousands, each waits to be seen. Against the assembly line of speed and sameness, slowness restores the soul’s signature.
The Wall That Still Holds Them
Two presences endure within a wall that no longer closes seamlessly around them. One withdraws into shadow; the other comes further into the light of legibility. Around them, fracture, erosion, and carved stone become a single field of custody, where grace survives within damage, not beyond it.
Continue Reading
If this piece found something in you, you may wish to continue the journey elsewhere.
On The Lantern Chronicles, I gather writings from Angkor, myth and legend, contemplative essays, and poetry — works shaped by silence, beauty, wonder, memory, and the deeper questions that follow us through the world.
It is a place for stone and story, reflection and vow, shadow and revelation.
You would be most welcome there.