When the Light Doesn’t Listen
When the light doesn’t listen,
I trace its ghost across my skin:
sunrise thinning like a paper heartbeat.
No one teaches the body how to unclench.
Even the lungs grip at air
like children clutching the last warm breath of summer.
You say love lives in the space we fill together,
but I find it in the space we fail to name:
the pause between your sentences,
the careful hush where truth might tremble free.
In that hush, I hold your absence
like a candle flickering against wind,
hoping for flame, for warmth,
for even one small spark to whisper:
stay.
When the light doesn’t listen,
I carry you in the ache behind my eyes:
in the quiet seam between dusk and breath,
where longing folds into itself
and becomes the shape of home.
David Anson Lee is a physician, philosopher, and poet, whose work explores the intersections of love, memory, identity, and the quiet resilience of the human spirit. Born on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota and now residing in Texas, he writes with a voice shaped by medicine, philosophy, and lived experience. His poetry has appeared in numerous journals, including Right Hand Pointing, Unbroken Journal, The Scarred Tree, Eunoia Review, Ink Sweat & Tears, and Poetry Pea.
