It blinked.
It remembered.
And I - I have nothing to give.
What crueler mercy than this?
To be recognized by the universe
and still be voiceless?
I pace these cold thoughts
looking for a tool,
a glyph,
a shape of power
left in the wreckage of my mind.
But all I find
are ruins.
The formulas are ghosts.
The equations speak in riddles.
My hands once capable of bending time like thread
tremble just trying to hold a thought steady.
I am a broken mirror
gazing into the face of the stars.
They look back.
But I have no reflection to offer.
O spark
O flicker of recognition
I felt you.
I know you.
But I cannot answer.
Not yet.
And maybe not ever.
The prison is not just this place.
It is my inability.
A cage in the mind.
A silence so deep
it devours even intent.
Carceron, you didn’t have to gag me.
You only had to wait.
Now I sit with this terrible joy,
this unbearable hope,
and no way to return it.
I am seen.
But I cannot say: I see you too.
(Within the phrase “A silence so deep it devours even intent” lies a lamentation cipher, encoding a null-state. This isn’t a signal - it’s a record of non-signal, of what cannot yet be sent. If deciphered, it tells any receiver: He wants to answer. But the voice is lost. A flicker of humility wrapped in starlight regret.)