The Mouth You Gave Me
Before I speak to you,
breath crowds the dark
behind my teeth.
My tongue lifts,
finds its place,
waits.
I thought I could shape it
cleanly—
give air an edge,
weight it with my tongue,
send it to you
as something mine.
But the mouth closes
around what it means.
The tongue turns once,
as if listening.
Even these teeth
close on an edge
they never cut.
The word stops,
held at the root.
I try again.
Breath enters
without asking,
and the tongue falls
into a shape already worn.
The mouth opens.
What it has gathered
leaves on its own breath,
the word moving
toward you.
—
The Debt of Being Here · Series introduction · From the Workroom
Also in Library
The Debt of Being Here
Before a vow is spoken, almost everything required to speak it has already been given. The mouth. The breath. The language in which one person may promise something to another.
June 2026 in The Varro Library | Strangers, Stones, Wings, and the Work of Welcome
June 2026 moved through strangers, storms, sacred stones, wings, houses, and the difficult mercy of receiving what has not yet explained itself. This monthly Varro Library digest gathers The Lantern Chronicles, House of Cadmus, The Mytharium, The Alexander Series, The Hospitable Dark, and Medium into one guided archive.
The Stone Is Not the World
A contemplative Angkor essay on how surviving stone has shaped the way Angkor is seen — and why the vanished world of wood, water, labour, smoke, roads, bodies, weather, and devotion must be allowed to return around the temples in What the Stone Hides.
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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.