Gold before it learned to shine. A room holding its breath. Paper deciding to be elsewhere. A hand remembers what language cannot. Seeing without arriving. Knowing without a name. Distance happens. Not as space but as a quiet thinning. Praise falls in the wrong place. The heart tilts and does not explain itself. Time forgets how to be linear. It curves. It returns wearing another sky. What was once imagined stands still and waits. Gold does not belong to museums or mouths or eyes. It belongs to the body recognizing what it has never touched. One day, nothing will be carried. No tools. No questions. No proof. Only breath entering light, and light leaving everything else. **I** In a classroom smelling of summer rain, colors were still learning how to dry. I did not know the name of gold, only how the light stayed. The teacher spoke. The walls listened. But paper— paper became elsewhere. *** **II** You did not say *Europe*, you did not say *museum*. You said, *I’m drawing what I remember.* Your hand moved like someone answering a question no one else had heard. *** **III** They praised what was mine. Yet my heart walked toward your page. If this is imitation, then why did it breathe? What is original, if not this ache? The room kept the silence. We grew slightly apart inside it. *** **IV** Later, you stayed with art as if it were a native language. I chose another grammar. Still, through you, I glimpsed a distant household of beauty— a life a little unearthly, where art was not explained, only lived. *** **V** In the kingdom of reason someone led me back by the hand— into galleries, into long afternoons of looking. And then— the light returned. Not imagined. Not borrowed. Waiting, quietly, under a different sky. *** **VI** Time makes circles where we swear there were lines. The gold you carried at thirteen stood before me, unashamed of distance. My chest knew it at once. Memory does not forget the body. *** **Coda** Someday, I will stand before *The Kiss* and carry nothing with me. No pencil. No measure. No need to understand. Only this— breath entering light, light leaving breath. *** **(a single voice remains)** Ah— *** Verse 1 (softly) A middle school afternoon, paint still damp, Specks of light I didn’t know the name of yet. The teacher’s voice was drifting somewhere far, Only the paper held the world. Verse 1’ You didn’t talk about the trip at all, You said, “I remember,” and began to draw. Lines that came from someone who had seen— Unclear, and yet completely sure. Pre-Chorus (gently swaying) The grade, somehow, was given to me, But my heart leaned quietly your way. If copying isn’t art, then tell me— What is? The question stayed behind in that room. Chorus (opening up) Gold, I’d never truly seen you then, Still, somehow, you were touching me. Breathing softly inside memory, A kiss I wasn’t meant to know. Interlude (voices overlapping) La la… la… (a lower voice) La… la la… Verse 2 (more grown, calmer) I chose a different kind of road, You stayed inside that world of art. A distance warm as something like a family, That slightly otherworldly smile. Verse 2’ At the edge of logic and equations, You gave me time to look at art. Seeing beauty with a science-trained eye, A strange new window opened wide. Chorus 2 (a little stronger) Under Japan’s sky, it had arrived— That light from far-off days and lands. Time drew a quiet, widening circle, And met me again inside my chest. Outro (whispered) Someday, I want to see The Kiss for real, Standing there, with nothing in my hands. When that moment comes, I won’t draw a single line— I’ll only breathe. (final, alone) La—
