Helichrysum

I was the winter that swept their voices...

Photo by Jr Korpa on Unsplash

Helichrysum

Helichrysum breaks granite—
gold persisting
long after stone has given way.

I was the silence
that emptied their laughter,
the winter 
that swept their voices.

I was the voice 
that made their paper dolls go quiet,
small hands learning 
to cut—
edges exact as quiet.

Years collapsed—
I found their drawings
pressed in dictionaries.
Stick figures holding hands
beneath crayon suns
I never let them finish.

Their names
taste of copper on my tongue—
salt blurs the ink
until their letters
bleed like bruises.

Now they speak
in voices that I stilled,
moving through gardens
closed to me.

Two gold faces—
unfading—
held between my breaking
and their sharp edges.

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Luciano Conte, born in Formia, Italy, roots himself in tactile arts like film photography, painting, bread baking, and house building. He writes in order to probe those persistent, buried forces that shape us from beneath the surface. For him, silence is not absence but presence: a pause that resonates the loudest, like the pause in a conversation that carries more weight than words. He speaks his lines aloud while writing, tying rhythm to breath, making language a living, physical act where sound and sense fuse, just as photography captures light and shadow. He urges readers to read his work aloud to unlock layers that silent reading misses, letting the cadence shape the experience in the same way as kneading dough or laying foundation stones, where each gesture is deliberate and consequential.

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