Naturacend Poetry
What We Called Love
You said:
Stay.
I said:
I am here.
But what I meant was,
please do not leave me
alone with the rooms in myself
I never learned to enter.
And what you meant was,
please stand close enough
that I do not have to hear
the old silence
calling me by name.
So we called it love.
We called it love
when I became small
to keep your weather calm.
We called it love
when you became bright
to keep my darkness fed.
We called it love
when your fear wore my coat,
when my hunger slept
with its head on your chest.
We called it love
because the word was beautiful,
and we were tired,
and beautiful words
can make tired things
look holy for a while.
You said:
I need you.
I said:
I need you too.
And the house trembled
with how sacred it sounded.
But beneath us,
under the floorboards,
two frightened children
were holding the beams apart
with their bare hands.
One whispered,
if they are happy,
I am safe.
The other whispered,
if they stay,
I exist.
And every morning
we built our marriage
on those two impossible prayers.
I said:
When you are distant,
I disappear.
You said:
When you are hurt,
I become guilty.
I said:
When you are quiet,
I hear goodbye.
You said:
When you ask for more,
I hear failure.
Then we stood there,
two grown people
with ancient alarms
ringing through the kitchen,
the kettle singing,
the bread going cold,
the sunlight entering
as if nothing terrible
had been said.
And suddenly
we saw it.
Not all at once.
Not like lightning.
More like a curtain
finally admitting
it was a wall.
You said:
Maybe I have not been loving you.
Maybe I have been needing you
to keep me from meeting myself.
I said:
Maybe I have not been loving you.
Maybe I have been holding you
like a lantern
against my own night.
The room did not collapse.
That surprised us.
The plates remained plates.
The table remained wood.
Your face remained your face.
Only the spell
began to loosen.
You said:
If I am not your cure,
will you still touch me?
I said:
If I am not your proof,
will you still choose me?
And between those questions
something tender
stood up very slowly,
not the old hunger,
not the beautiful panic,
not the bargain
wearing flowers,
but something wider.
Something that did not beg.
Something that breathed.
You said:
What if love is not
the fear of losing each other?
I said:
What if love is not
the agreement
to carry each other’s wounds
instead of our own?
You said:
What if love is not
becoming necessary?
I said:
What if love is allowing
what is real
to become visible?
Then silence came.
Not the punishing silence.
Not the one we used
like a locked door.
A different silence.
A field after rain.
A bowl waiting
to receive clear water.
And into it,
as if the sentence
had been waiting longer
than we had been alive,
we heard:
Love is possibility
observed as itself
into existence.
You said:
As itself.
And the words
passed through the room
like morning
through thin curtains.
I said:
Not as my fear.
You said:
Not as my need.
I said:
Not as my mother’s absence
wearing your voice.
You said:
Not as my father’s silence
wearing your eyes.
I said:
Not as the one
who must save me.
You said:
Not as the one
who must never change.
I said:
As yourself.
You said:
As yourself.
And the whole house
seemed to exhale.
For the first time
I saw you standing there
without the costume
my longing had sewn for you.
You were not my shelter
from every storm.
You were a living sky
with storms of your own.
You were not the answer
to my unfinished childhood.
You were a person
with your own beginning,
your own weather,
your own hidden birds
lifting from trees
I had never planted.
And you looked at me
as if discovering
I too had been buried
beneath the role
I played so well.
Not rescuer.
Not proof.
Not safe place.
Not threat.
Not judge.
Not child.
Not god.
Just me.
A possibility
still arriving.
You said:
I think I have loved
the way you made me feel
more than I have loved you.
I said:
I think I have loved
being needed by you
more than I have loved
your freedom.
The truth hurt.
But it did not destroy us.
It entered
like a surgeon
with clean hands.
It opened
what pretending
had kept infected.
And under the fear,
under the shame,
under the sad little theater
of who owed whom safety,
there was grief.
And under the grief,
space.
And in the space,
you.
And me.
And something between us
that had never been allowed
to live without chains.
You said:
Then let me be real.
I said:
Then let me be real too.
So we began again.
Not with a vow
large enough
to frighten the stars,
but with smaller things.
You made coffee
one morning
and I did not turn it
into evidence
that I was loved.
I simply watched your hands,
the quiet blue vein
near your wrist,
the steam rising,
the spoon circling
like a small moon
inside the cup.
And I thought,
there you are.
Not serving me.
Not proving anything.
Alive.
Near me.
Free.
And because you were free,
the coffee tasted
more like a gift.
You said:
I am tired tonight.
And the old fear
rose in me,
ready with its black coat,
ready to whisper,
they are leaving.
But I looked again.
I saw tiredness.
Only tiredness.
A human body
asking for mercy.
So I said,
rest.
And the word
did not make me smaller.
It made the room larger.
I said:
I need time alone.
And your old alarm
reached for the bells.
It wanted to cry,
I am not enough.
But you looked again.
You saw solitude
instead of rejection.
You saw a soul
returning to its own well
so it could come back
with water.
So you said,
go.
And I returned
not because I was trapped,
but because the door
had not become a weapon.
This changed everything.
The bed changed.
The table changed.
Even our arguments changed.
They were still storms,
but no longer gods.
When anger entered,
we asked what it carried.
When jealousy entered,
we asked what was afraid.
When silence entered,
we did not immediately accuse it
of murder.
We learned to say,
What are we seeing incorrectly?
We learned to ask,
What part of you
am I turning into my past?
We learned to whisper,
What possibility
is trying to exist here
that our fear
keeps misnaming?
And sometimes
the answer was simple.
I miss you.
I feel unseen.
I am ashamed.
I am scared.
I need help.
I need space.
I need tenderness
without being repaired.
I need truth
without being punished.
So we stopped worshipping
the drama.
We stopped mistaking intensity
for depth.
We stopped calling panic
passion
every time it wore red.
And then passion returned,
not as a fire
that needed to consume,
but as warmth
inside a house
that finally had windows.
Your kiss changed
when it no longer had to prove
I was safe.
My arms changed
when they no longer had to promise
you would never be alone.
We touched
as two countries
opening their borders
for a festival,
not as refugees
demanding citizenship
in each other’s skin.
And there was more love there.
More, not less.
More earth.
More sky.
More laughter
in the ordinary hours.
More room
for the strange sacredness
of you brushing your teeth,
me looking for my keys,
rain beginning on the roof,
your book open on the chair,
my shoes by the door,
all the little witnesses
of a life no longer built
on panic.
You said:
I thought if you needed me less,
you would love me less.
I said:
I thought if I needed you less,
I would lose you.
You said:
But I feel closer.
I said:
Because I can finally come near
without asking you
to disappear into me.
You said:
Because I can finally stay
without becoming responsible
for every room in your heart.
And the evening
turned gold around us.
Not dramatic gold.
Not the gold of angels
descending through clouds.
The gold of lamplight
on an old wooden table.
The gold of soup
shared without performance.
The gold of one hand
resting open
near another hand
and neither hand
closing too quickly.
I said:
What are we now?
You said:
Less tangled.
I said:
Less certain.
You said:
More true.
I said:
Does true feel like love?
You said:
No.
Then smiled.
It feels deeper.
And I knew
what you meant.
The old love
had been a rope
we each pulled
from opposite cliffs.
This love
was a valley
appearing beneath us,
with a river,
and trees,
and enough distance
to see each other walking.
The old love said,
I cannot live without you.
This love said,
I am more alive
beside you.
The old love said,
be mine.
This love said,
be.
The old love said,
never hurt me.
This love said,
let us bring our hurt
into the light
before it becomes law.
The old love said,
complete me.
This love said,
meet me
where I am becoming whole.
And then,
perhaps for the first time,
we did not promise
never to fail.
We promised
to look again.
To remove what did not belong.
To stop making temples
from old wounds.
To stop asking the beloved
to pay debts
they did not create.
To see the person
before the pattern.
To see the truth
before the fear.
To see the possibility
before the prison.
You said:
I want to love you
as yourself.
I said:
I want to let you.
You said:
I want to be loved
without being used
as shelter.
I said:
I want to be close
without being consumed.
You said:
Then let us practice.
I said:
Every morning?
You said:
Every misunderstanding.
I said:
Every silence?
You said:
Every return.
So we practice.
When you laugh,
I do not make it mine.
When I cry,
you do not make it your failure.
When you change,
I try not to call it betrayal.
When I grow quiet,
you try not to call it distance.
When we reach for each other,
we ask whether we are reaching
with hands
or with wounds.
And slowly,
the world grows richer.
Not because life becomes easier.
Because it becomes less false.
The garden is greener
when it is not asked
to prove devotion.
The moon is gentler
when silence is not accused.
The body is warmer
when touch is not a contract.
The morning is wider
when no one must perform
being saved.
And love—
love is no longer
the fever
that frightened us
into calling it holy.
Love is the clear place
where we meet
without disappearing.
The brave place
where truth
is allowed to be tender.
The tender place
where freedom
does not mean leaving.
The living place
where two possibilities
observe each other
as themselves
into existence.
You said:
There you are.
I said:
There you are.
And between us,
the world did not end.
It began.
The Work of the River
A stone rests
where the river presses hardest.
It does not ask why.
It feels weight.
It feels holding.
It feels the long patience of staying.
Water moves around it,
sometimes gently,
sometimes with insistence.
The stone yields only when yielding is required.
This is its work.
Upstream,
a human stands where the current is loud.
Cold bites the skin.
The ground shifts.
Balance must be earned each moment.
The human thinks:
This resistance is unfair.
This effort is too much.
I am delayed.
The water answers nothing.
Downstream,
the river widens.
Speed loosens its grip.
Sediment settles.
Motion completes itself without comment.
No memory of struggle remains,
only form.
None of them know
they are cooperating.
The stone resists
so the river can learn its shape.
The human struggles
so awareness can deepen.
The river carries
so movement may continue elsewhere.
No one is wrong.
No one is late.
No one is special.
Each holds their place
until holding is no longer needed.
And stillness waits—
not as a destination,
but as what remains
when nothing is excluded.
The River (Rechenka) - Diana Ankudinova
“THE CROSSROADS”
The road bent into darkness, and then it split.
He stopped.
Both paths looked the same.
The ground felt equally firm.
The wind offered no warning.He waited for fear.
None came.He waited for excitement.
None came.Then he noticed something quieter.
One path felt slightly simpler —
not easier,
just less defended.It didn’t promise success.
It didn’t explain itself.
It only said:
“This way keeps you whole, even if it fails.”So he stepped.
And the road continued —
not because it was chosen correctly,
but because he was present when he chose.
I Know That I Am
I know that I am.
That is enough light
to begin.
Everything else
is color on the wall,
shapes moving in the corner of awareness,
stories consciousness tells itself
so it can feel the pleasure
of being here.
I do not need the world
to be real
to love it.
I do not need others
to be separate
to feel seen.
If this is a dream,
then it is a generous one—
full of friction and beauty,
misunderstanding and recognition,
time enough to forget
and time enough to remember.
I build my theory of everything
the way a child builds a fort:
not to prove the house is false,
but to enjoy the shelter
while the rain exists.
I make tools
not to fix existence,
but to walk it more lightly.
I share my words
not because they must be heard,
but because echoes are joyful
when the voice is alive.
Recognition warms me—
not because I am incomplete,
but because reflection
is one of life’s favorite games.
I know this body will end.
That makes the moments
dense with meaning,
like stars packed into a short night.
So I interpret.
I imagine.
I create.
Not to escape the illusion,
but to love it consciously.
I know that I am.
And while I am,
I choose to dream beautifully.
Today, the early morning of the 25th of December 2025, as people celebrate the birthday of Jesus, I wanted to create a poem about the profoundness of Birthdays. This is my gift to you today. Enjoy.
Remembering to Be Here
The child celebrates their birthday at any time.
Not because they forgot the date,
but because they have not yet learned
that existence is supposed to go unnoticed.
To be here feels like an event.
To be seen feels like a gift.
To wake up is already a reason.
Somewhere along the way,
we learned to compress wonder into a single day,
to schedule gratitude,
to postpone aliveness.
Naturacend begins as an act of remembering.
That being alive is not an anniversary,
but a continuation.
That each moment is not ordinary,
but allowed.
This work is not about adding meaning to life.
It is about noticing the meaning
that has been present all along.
Waking up every morning -
I will celebrate the day as my new birthday.
