Empty Set

She lives in slices.
Parallel. Unjoined.
Circles that almost close
and don’t.

Trained early
not to make an ism of feeling.
Now the metal is tired.
Steam under the still face.
Gears she has not been allowed to grind.

If the fragments met—
if any broken ring sealed—
she might hold her ground.
She does not know where that is.
Only that she has never arrived.

Straight will not have curve.
Sharp will not have soft.
The process is not seamless.
It never was.

For too long she has been stitched
into a machine that was meant to be a life.
Comings. Goings.
No arrivals.
An empty set she has to live inside.

The words she needed
were never assembled.
Nipped in the letter.
Swallowed.
Inferred, which is not the same.

Love was not a word yet.
The people who might have said it
are gone.

Silence has a mechanical power.
It lasts.
It runs on what was never spoken
and calls that order.