A poem by Na Yama.

"The Forgotten Heart"

O shadow that presses against my chest, you who speak through silence, a voice that never turns to me, a wind that bends without knowing, how it breaks the fragile stalk of my soul. I walk, carrying your name like a secret, a golden thread ablaze in a burning dusk.

Your eyes are rivers I drown within, but the current does not know my hands, the trembling devotion that slips from me, sinking into the depths where love drowns, alone, untouched, forgotten by the tide. How can a bird sing, waiting for a sky that will not call its name aloud?

Oh vast expanse, invisible and cruel, you stretch between your heart and mine, an ocean where my longing crests and falls like waves upon deafened shores. In the garden of unspoken yearning, I am the solitary vine that climbs toward the unreachable sun of your smile.

I see your laughter, a warm constellation, yet it glimmers far as forgotten stars. I reach, I grasp, but hold only shadows; your name becomes an ember on my tongue, burning silently without the oil of return. Oh world, does she know a fire feeds on its own ache, brighter with her absence?

Each word you speak, my tender abyss, falls like raindrops against a stone heart– not yours, but mine, heavy with hope. Does the moon dare to mourn the sun as it circles in a dance of distance? No hands of light ever touch each other, yet I circle your orbit endlessly, faithfully.

Let me tell the story of your indifference: a palace where my dreams kneel, its doors forever closed against my cry. I press my face against its cold walls, my breath fogging the distance between us, and yet, inside, the feast of your beauty carries on without my shadowed seat.

Your voice is a waterfall I long to drink, sweet and clear, but inexhaustibly distant. Each syllable rains upon deafened ears, reaching everyone but the heart that beats its pulse in rhythm with your name. Oh tragedy of the unanswered call, who will mend the wound of your silence?

Days pass; they are not days but lifetimes, measured not in moments but missed chances. Dreams wear your reflection as their robe, waking only to the fear of darkness– the silence that fills the spaces you left, spaces that were never truly mine to lose. Could I be the sky that holds the sparrow?

I carve your image onto the bones of my every hour, shaping whispers that no one hears except the walls. Would you be still if you knew? Would your soul tilt towards mine, or would the unlit candle of your gaze flicker colder in the winds of rejection?

Your presence is the earth to my roots, but cruelly I grow without touching you. The vast plains between us mock my steps, turning the journey towards you endless. Each glance from your eyes is a sunbeam, and mine? Merely a shadow that braces against the light, unnoticed, unreturned.

If love is a fruit, should I be the tree whose limbs stretch, barren and yearning? Each branch twists with the weight of words that stumble and fracture before reaching you. Oh you, my dreamer of another's love, how did I become a song unsung, a melody too hidden for your voice to find?

Even now, as I write this procession of syllables soaked with unanswered desire, I feel the weight of the world pause– not for me, but for the impossibility that you would turn and call my name with tender lips, not out of politeness, but out of a soul demanding my love.

Do you ever stop and feel the silence that follows the sound of a breaking heart? It is not a loud wailing, my beloved, but a quiet collapse, as stars extinguish, one by one, leaving the night darker. The universe shrinks when love constricts, folding upon itself, heavy and breathless.

Yet I do not stop my endless pilgrimage. Though my footsteps echo without company, and the road is a desert of mirages, I carry your image as my compass. Oh you, my unknowing beloved muse; how cruelly you walk without turning, leaving me tethered to the wind you stir.

If one day the sun touches the moon, know that I too would embrace the impossible. Yet I fear your light is not for me, that I am the shadow love cannot hold. Do you hear my name, floating like ash, born from an anguish fed by your silence? Does the wind ever carry such faint cries?

And still, my soul kneels to your beauty, a holy temple raised to your indifference. Your absence is not absence at all but a constant presence in my chest, tight as a closed fist, holding nothing. Is love still love if it dies unanswered? Or does it live in its own endless ache?

I, the poet of this unbroken yearning, ask the mountains to measure my solitude. Each peak is a word I could not speak, each valley, the hollow left by your silence. Would the rain touch me as it touches you? Or does the storm weep for us both, knowing one heart beats in a lonely rhythm?

Teach me to love without breaking, if love to you is a stranger's face. Let me place my devotion on a shelf, an artifact to be visited but unneeded. Yet this fire inside consumes me whole, unrelenting and blind, a phoenix burning in silence, reborn in suffering.

Oh muse who walks away yet stays, you inhabit the air that surrounds me. Even as you vanish beyond the horizon, your voice lingers, an echo incomplete. One-sided or not, this is my offering, a love that blooms unsought, eternal, a candle chasing winds that may never end.

Part II

The Lament of the Silent Pulse

Beneath the vast veils of heaven's sorrow, where stars scatter like broken promises, a heart once carved from fire remains, aching beneath its solitary shadow, grains of time splintering its edges, its beat unheard, lost in the ether, a song sung quietly, unanswered, unseen.

Oh, forgotten heart, bearer of yearning tides, you, the trembling string of an unseen harp, play on though no hand reaches for you, your melody weaving through the wind's spine, winding through the universe's colossal ribs, a lament echoing against unfeeling stone. The world moves, leaving behind your pain.

In the gardens where jasmine exhales perfume, you once wore the aroma of soft embraces, a vessel brimming with infinite giving, your rhythm aligned with the moon's waves, your beat kissing the threshold of the stars, but love, a cruel thief, slipped by unseen, its gaze averted toward other tender blooms.

How you stood, a sentinel amid the cold, offering your warmth, your embers of life, while the face you craved turned away, untouched by the weeping of your veins, indifferent to the ocean held within you, your vibrancy lost upon blind eyes, your beauty a secret whispered to ruins.

Beneath the canopy of eternal silence, I see you, heart of aching constellations, a creature of fire swallowed by shadow, how the pulse of longing became a dirge, stranded amidst the symphonic adoration, persecuted by the very love you birthed, twisting through the fabric of your dreams.

You stood naked before the chill of indifference, your tender chambers opened like an altar, awaiting the sacrament of their attention, offering your soft eternity to the void– yet in this hunger, cruelest of fates spoke: "You will love, but you shall not be held, you will yearn, but remain cast adrift."

I hear your rhythm through the caverns below, its hollow, eternal thrum never ceases, a ceaseless testimony to human despair. Yet it speaks of resilience, fragile, enduring, a life unclaimed but unbroken in essence, a burning coal beneath snow's frozen grasp, proclaiming: "I am alive, though I suffer."

Oh, unremembered architect of fiery hours, you sculpted altars out of twilight's shadows, crafted prayers within silence's cathedral halls, while the gods of love remained deaf, your solitude washing against celestial walls, a tide that ebbs but never truly recedes, a love that burns alone in mortal exile.

Even the earth has turned her face away, forgetting your pain, your gift's pure light. Could it be, tender vessel of lifeblood, that your devotion was too fierce, a flame too bright for mortal eyes, a truth ungraspable within human limits, its magnitude bewildering heartless souls?

Yet here you endure, a martyr to hope, a witness to the beauty of quiet devotion, a lover unclaimed, yet boundless in feeling, your pulse thundering within the empty vastness, like the wings of a bird awaiting release, caught in love's cage, where no key exists, yet dreaming of the flight it can never take.

Oh, silent pulse, forgotten song of longing, you will outlast even the sun's descent, your tragedy etched into eternity's strand, a beacon for all who breathe in tempest winds. For in your sorrow resides a deep truth, a map to the frailty of the human soul, nourished even in droughts of cruel rejection.

When the heavens grow weary of their height, and Earth folds her arms to cradle silence, your song will remain, the ultimate echo, a testimony to love, raw and unflinching, an anthem birthed from quiet, holy pain, a love unreturned but magnificently vast, resounding in the endless arches of being.

So I honor you, forgotten, overlooked heart, your silent songs transcending neglect, like poetry whispered to tombs of the lost, a primordial ache that resonates with galaxies, proof that in longing, the infinite is found, and within one-sided love lives unfathomed grace, burned and preserved in immortal, radiant shadows.

by

Na Yama

N.Y.