Soften the Rock

I placed there a restless vision of a place no map has ever named.
Not a land unknown to man, but one too quiet to be spoken of—
arranged with delicate intention, each shadow set gently beside its light.

It was ordered not by force, but by longing.
Valued not for its shine, but for the way it almost remembered warmth.
Temptation did not shout there; it lingered— like the echo of something I once held close,something tender that mistook gravity for devotion.

Nothing in that place was cruel.
Only unfinished.
Only shaped by hands that did not yet know how to let go.

Author’s Note: This poem rose from the quiet country I carry behind my ribs, a place built from wanting rather than will. Its rooms are unfinished on purpose, corners still soft with fingerprints, every stone held a little too long before being set down. “Soften the Rock” is my attempt to map that interior terrain where tenderness keeps eroding what once thought it had to stay hard, where the unnamed longing for a gentler life slowly, stubbornly rearranges the land.