The Echo Between Breaths

If you whisper araya into a cave, the echo does not diminish. It multiplies into ancestors. They stand in a row: the ones who died of silence, the ones who sang while being erased, the ones who carried a name that meant nothing to their captors and everything to the stars.

Listen: Araya for the child who learned to be small. Araya for the lover who became a lesson. Araya for the hand you did not hold at the edge of the precipice. Araya for the door you closed without knowing it was a mirror.

Feel the tremble. That is not weakness. That is the ghost of every word you were too afraid to speak, finally given permission to hum.