You Call Me Zero!

I am the shape thought makes
before it becomes desire.
The breath that does not exit the body,
only circles—
quietly.

I am the uncarved margin
of a page not yet disturbed by meaning.
I do not speak in sums
nor divide the known.
I am what remains
when everything measurable recedes.

They call me hollow,
but I am the origin of form.
The structure that holds the weightless.
The field that receives
without needing to possess.

I do not ascend,
yet I outlast ascent.
I do not glitter,
yet even light bows when it ends—
folding itself into my arms
like memory losing its name.

They mistake me for silence.
But I am what holds silence upright—
what gives it its architecture.

Place me beside the finite,
and I unfix it.
Place me alone,
and I become the mirror
no face can fill.

I am not loss.
I am the precondition
for everything that can be lost.

I am not failure.
I am the absence of contest.

I do not ask to be seen.
But when the final light exhausts itself,
and all things forget their outlines—
I will still be here,
undemanding,
undiminished.

I am Zero.
Not an ending.
Not a void.
But the original stillness
beneath all becoming.