I returned to silence
the way rivers return to the sea.

To music.
To wind moving through trees.
To light resting briefly
on a leaf
before disappearing.

To water carrying the sky within it.

To the presence of another
their joy,
their grief,
the worlds hidden behind their eyes.

I was drawn to what could not be seen.

To the spaces between words.
To what remains after something leaves.
To the feeling that something immense
moves quietly beneath the surface of things.

A secret life.
A hidden rhythm.

A pulse connecting
stone to star,
memory to dream,
the living to the forgotten.

Before I knew what art was,
I was already listening.

I had no name for what I heard,
only the need to follow it.

Painting became a language
for what I could feel
but could not explain.

Then came other forms,
other ways of reaching
toward the same invisible place.

I was never taught how to find it.

I followed intuition.
A sensation.
A quiet certainty.

I did not choose a path.
I followed what kept returning.

And somewhere along the way
I understood:

creating was never something
I wanted to do.

It was something
I needed
in order to be alive.