I. There is a place where the earth forgot to close its mouth, a caldera yawning, cradling a lake like a secret it meant to swallow but couldn’t.
The river spills its confession over the edge, thundering down in white ribbons that never learned the word for silence.
And there, if you know where to look, if you’re brave enough to trust, a basalt spine winds toward the waterfall’s throat, a path that appears to end at the edge of everything, the crest where water chooses its violence.
A step forward, into what seems like stepping into sky, and the rock catches you, holds you in a pocket of illegal geometry, a perch that shouldn’t exist: close enough for the mist to write on your skin, just far enough from the roar to think, but not far enough away to speak.
As if the earth kept one secret from the water, one dry whisper in all that shouting, untrodden for centuries, waiting.
II. One fall, an oak fell, and revealed a hint of the path.
A painter came with brushes, a poet came with pens. Different schedules, two ghosts haunting different hours.
Somehow in those first months they never crossed, never saw the other’s shadow leaving as they arrived. The rocks kept their secret, the waterfall swallowed all evidence.
They each found that impossible perch, that secret the earth kept from water, where sound devours sound, where the roar makes monasteries of our mouths.
III. When spring returned and schedules shifted, same free hour between lectures, they found each other in their stolen cathedral of mist.
No names. No words could survive that beautiful violence of water. So they spoke in other tongues:
A poet wrote a painter tiny poems: your paintings look like a toddler’s fever dream colors arguing with themselves
A painter drew a poet portraits: nose like a question mark, eyes too far apart, catching them mid-sneeze.
They laughed until their ribs ached, tucking these treasures into pockets, these love letters disguised as insults, these promises that needed no names.
IV. The kiss arrived like weather, sudden, inevitable. A poet simply walked to a painter one day and placed mouth to mouth as if returning something borrowed.
Time folded itself into origami, each second creased sharp and permanent. The mist hung like the pause between lightning and its permission to break. The waterfall’s roar became a church bell ringing backwards, unmaking every wedding.
Perfect, a painter thought, and already the naming had begun its small murder.
V. A painter searched for a poet on campus between buildings, in the library’s hush, in the cafeteria’s mundane clatter.
There: the hair, that precise shade of honey aging in glass, the gold that deepens when left alone.
The way a poet held their books, three textbooks splayed against the hip at an angle requiring impossible dexterity for someone with such a small frame, wrists bent like a pianist reaching for octaves they’ll never span.
A poet walked past a painter as if they were architecture, as if they were just another thing with walls.
VI. At the falls, a poet kissed a painter like nothing had changed. Like they were still unnamed, uncharted.
A painter drew them kissing, a question mark hovering above their heads like a halo or a noose.
A poet wrote: things that have no names: the color of water at the exact moment it decides to fall the taste your laughter leaves on my sleeve the distance between us measured in silence
VII. The next day on campus, among the named things, Chemistry Building, Student Union, a painter found a poet by the fountain.
“Hey,” a painter said, playing along, “I think I’ve seen you at the falls.”
A poet smiled at their conspiracy. “The falls,” they said, tasting the words. “Strange how we shrink things with names. There’s this whole caldera that holds a lake like the earth is cupping water in its palms. The river drifts along until gravity catches it off guard, then it’s all white ribbons and rage. The roar that makes monasteries of the mouth.”
Their face betrayed for a moment the irony in those words.
“And hidden in the rocks, this impossible ledge where the mist writes on your skin, then erases what it wrote.”
A painter nodded, bashful, unsure how to continue this dance of pretending to be strangers when their mouths had already told each other everything.
VIII. A poet kissed a painter again the next day, longer this time, and their mind reorganized its atlas.
The place wasn’t the falls anymore, wasn’t the caldera or the lake. It was the coordinates of a poet’s mouth, the longitude of their laughter, the elevation where their silence meant more than any sound.
A painter thought: maybe unnamed things grow larger in the dark, like pupils dilating, like love before we call it love.
IX. Three days later, on campus, near the same fountain, a painter found a poet again.
“You know I really like you,” a painter said, the words tumbling like water over an edge they couldn’t see. “And I am just wondering, what is this to you? What would we even call it, you and I?”
A poet’s face closed like a book returning to its shelf, like a door remembering what it was built for.
X. A poet vanished. One week. Then two. A painter haunted their spot alone, the roar now just noise, the rocks wrong under their hands. A painter brought their paints but couldn’t paint. The place had lost its language.
XI. Then one day: a poet was there, already writing. They didn’t look up, just slid the folded paper towards a painter:
things that stay infinite: the sky before anyone called it blue bread rising in the dark the butterfly’s time without a name for waiting us, before you ask what we are
things that shrink when named: the feeling of flight after you say “bird” the ocean after you say “water” love after you call it love
I need you to be hungry with me for things that have no words let this be enough for you it is everything to me
XII. A painter read it three times, each time understanding differently. They pulled out their sketchpad, drew them both: a poet’s nose too sharp, a painter’s ears too large, their funhouse selves sitting on the rocks with a picnic basket between them, checkered blanket and all.
At the bottom, where the title would go, just empty space.
XIII. Next time, a poet was there with an actual basket, checkered blanket spread on the rocks, spray from the falls misting the bread. They poured wine into two cups without speaking. They ate in the roar.
Before a painter left, a poet handed them another poem:
your paintings still look like a hurricane taught a toddler to hold a brush
things to bring next time: the dark that lives between twenty-four flickers per second something that tells stories without us having to
A painter laughed, understanding. Their silent place expanding its vocabulary of wordlessness.
XIV. Years telescoped into moments: Picnics. Movies on laptops. Books read in parallel muteness. Paintings exchanged for poems, insults exchanged for kisses. Never a word exchanged. Never a name for this unnamed thing.
One spring, three years later, a painter drew them again, funhouse style: a poet’s nose a mountain, a painter’s chin an avalanche, and on their impossible fingers, two rings catching light. At the bottom, empty space.
XV. A poet arrived the next week with two silver bands in their pocket. No box. No ceremony. A poet slipped one on a painter’s finger, a painter slipped one on a poet’s. The waterfall roared its approval, or its indifference, or just its water.
A poet handed a painter a poem:
the water knows how to fall without ever learning the word gravity
I have been so hungry with you in this place that needs no names
but some hungers grow until they demand to be called by name to answer when called
keep coming here keep the silence perfect
A painter read it three times, not understanding the goodbye hidden in the geology of words.
XVI. A poet never came back to the falls.
A painter waited through spring, through the thesis deadlines, through graduation’s approach.
The rocks remembered a poet’s shape, the water kept falling without witness.
XVII. Years. Then decades. A painter became a professor, teaching color theory in the same buildings where they’d pretended to be strangers.
Every Tuesday and Thursday, between lectures, the same stolen hour, returning to their unnamed place.
The path worn deeper now, steps automatic as breathing.
A painter searched for a poet in the spaces between library shelves, air a few degrees cooler, lignin sweet dust lifting the forearm’s fine hairs like static before a touch.
In the pressure bruise after thunder, eardrums holding a beat too long, that coin on the tongue taste before the rain remembers its weight.
In the heat ghost a mug leaves, the handle’s bite still printed in tendons, palm cooling around the absence it shaped.
In the way shadows feel cooler at the rim and warm to nothing in the middle, a velvet nap rubbed backward, then smooth.
In the grass’s nap reversed by a calf, damp blades splayed and springing back, not believing it yet, skin tingling where it pressed.
In the small braking space between the question and the silence that follows: teeth resting on the word, the throat unopening, lungs waiting for permission.
In negative space, which presses back: gesso tightened like a drumhead, the pull of what’s unpainted making the surface ring more clearly than any color laid down.
XVIII. A painter paints still. Canvases accumulate in the studio: the same rocks from different angles, the same water never twice the same, the absence that lives in the spray.
When galleries ask for titles, a painter shakes their head. When collectors insist on names, a painter walks away.
A gallerist sighs, inscribes:
Untitled #247 Untitled #248 Untitled #249
XIX. One September, between semesters, new students filling campus the way silence fills a room after the wrong question:
there. The hair, honey darkening in a jar, that particular gold gone deep with waiting. The way they held their books, that impossible angle, and the way they paused before speaking, as if timing their breath to someone else’s.
A painter knew before knowing, recognized the geography of genes, the inherited architecture of gesture.
XX. A painter approached after the lecture, casual as weather. “There’s a place I go to paint. Never told anyone about it. Would you like to see?”
A poet nodded, curious about this strange professor whose office walls held hundreds of the same untitled view.
“Don’t tell me your name,” a painter said. “This place doesn’t need our names.”
A poet tilted their head, confused but intrigued, and followed.
XXI. At the falls, a poet’s breath caught. Looked at the rocks, the perfect perch, the way the mist wrote temporary poems. A painter pulled out a notebook, weathered, pages soft with spray:
things that stay infinite: the butterfly’s time without a name for waiting us, before you ask what we are
The handwriting unmistakable. A poet looked at a painter, understanding settling like sediment after violence.
The embrace was brief, fierce, salt mixing with spray. No words could survive that beautiful violence.
A painter pulled back, smiled, pointed to the rocks, mimed writing, then walked away alone for the first time in twenty years, but not lonely.
The place had found its echo.
XXII. A poet came back. Tuesday. Thursday. The same stolen hours, the same sacred silence. Writing poems without titles, sending them into the spray like messages in bottles meant for no one, meant for everyone.
XXIII. Spring semester. A painter called their most gifted student after class. This young painter who mixed colors like someone trying to name what hurts, who understood negative space like loneliness.
“There’s a place,” a painter said, drawing a map on the back of an ungraded essay. “Past the oak grove, follow the sound until it swallows all other sounds. The path pretends to end at the waterfall’s edge. Don’t believe it. Tuesday and Thursday afternoons. Find where the mist writes and words can’t follow.”
XXIV. A young painter found the falls, found the courage to walk past, the end of the path, found a poet already there, honey hair catching light like fire teaching water how to burn.
No words. The roar swallowed any need for introduction. A poet wrote. A painter sketched. The rocks between them holding space for what would come.
XXV. A poet stood to leave, handed a painter a folded paper:
things that begin without permission: spring hunger the way water decides to fall whatever this is about to be
A painter laughed, pulled out charcoal, sketched a poet quickly: nose too sharp, eyes too wide, a funhouse portrait labeled: person I’ve definitely never met
XXVI. The waterfall keeps its vigil, its perfect roar of nothing, magnificent and unnamed.
The rocks remember everything: A professor and a poet, decades ago. A poet writing a painter their child’s unsaid name. A poet recognizing a mother’s words. A new painter learning this ancient hunger.
And now: these two new unnamed things, learning the geography of silence, the language of staying infinite, the art of being everything by being nothing that can be called by name.
The water knows how to fall without ever learning why.