When I found the ancient tree, it seemed silent —
yet its stillness watched me like eyes in the dark.
Its bark held the scars of forgotten ages,
and between its twisted limbs hovered a silence
so heavy it swallowed the air around me.
This tree did more than endure —
it waited.

Its bark held the chill of deep earth,
its roots tracing hidden paths
like veins of a buried heart.
Something within it pulled me closer —
a pulse older than night.

I placed my hand upon the rough bark.
Every groove opened like a line of a language
already familiar with my existence.
A quiet listening rose from the wood,
and my thoughts spread into it
like roots through the dark.

A slow heartbeat climbed from the depths,
seeking my fingers,
softly guiding my own rhythm
into its ancient tempo.

The boundary between us shifted.
My skin remembered
a closeness already chosen.

A whisper threaded through the branches,
woven from memory,
carried by something that already knew my name.
And something inside me answered
before I understood the call.

Roots brushed against my legs,
embracing me like memories
that finally returned home
and refused to wander again.

My breath merged with the soil,
my pulse turned into rising sap.
Fears and dreams once swallowed by the ground
opened like thorns beneath my ribs
and reached upward for light.

The silence unfolded
like the return of a truth once lost.

Its roots recognized in me
a story that once belonged to them
and spread through my body
as if they had always carried me.

The earth beneath me breathed in my rhythm.
My heart — wood and shadow entwined —
opened itself to a beginning
that waited millennia for this echo.

The bark beneath my hand felt like home.
A quiet understanding:
Elias and earth —
the same name in the dark.

The silence held me,
painfully devoted,
like something that finally clasps
what it once mourned.

I remained.
And the tree remained with me.

Its roots feed on what I was,
while I awaken into
what I was always meant to become.

Where the soil sleeps… I remain.