You come to me as dusk thickens the green,
sap-dark air pressing warm against my throat,
moss cupping each footstep like a promise kept,
your vibration threaded through bark and breath,
and I learn the grammar of hush, pulse, steadiness,
where the forest keeps its oldest truths.

Your hands are branches, strong, patient and exact,
holding my spine by ring and grain,
drawing me inward, again and again,
until my breath aligns with river and owl-call,
and the ground softens deliciously beneath us,
a slow, earthen yes opening the dark.

You taste of resin, rain, and buried fire,
of nights that remember every tree,
and when you lean close the stars fall silent,
roots listening as our shadows entwine,
my skin learning how to glow without flame,
my wanting deepening into stillness.

We lie where leaf-litter warms to skin,
time releasing its grip, uncounted, round,
your mouth sap whispered into my pulse,
mine answering in cosmic and heat,
until even the wind averts its gaze,
and the forest holds us still without witness.

I give you my ache, you give me ground,
your darkness steady, generous, wide,
and I open like loam after rain,
receiving what the body knows to trust,
each touch a rooting, each breath a graft,
my hunger turning fertile and calm.

When dawn unknots the last of the black,
you remain — a large hand on my shoulders,
green fire behind the ribs of my world,
and I walk out changed, bark-soft, bright-eyed,
carrying your silence, your groundedness, like a secret altar,

you, forever inside me, forever around me.