There was always something hidden at the thigh:
metal cooled beneath the ordinary cloth,
a weight that warmed my skin without reply.
My mouth learned silence first, then oath,
how breath can whet a blade without a sound,
how light falls clean and leaves the darker growth.
A hand remembers what it hasn’t found—
the seam in wood, the cracks in ice,
a pulse that keeps returning underground.
At night it hums—not loudly, like a wire
strung across two unseen posts; a spark
returns your voice, then makes a muted choir,
words I’ll never sing to you. A mark
can still be left without a hidden blade
as skin remembers pressure in the dark.
The cloth is thin. The edge remains at play.