The Breath Between Heartbeats

There is a specific texture to silence that I only recognize when I am entirely alone in a high, cold place. It feels like the prickle of dry grass against bare ankles, a sharp, rhythmic scratching that reminds you that the earth is not soft. I remember the smell of ozone and crushed sage, the way the air thins until it tastes like cold iron on the back of the tongue. In those moments, the body stops its frantic searching. The shoulders drop, the jaw unknots, and you become a statue of your own making, waiting for a movement that may never come. It is a strange, hollow peace—the kind that settles in your marrow when you realize that being hidden is not the same as being lost. We spend so much time trying to be seen, but is there not a deeper, more ancient power in simply existing, unseen, behind the veil of the world? When do you finally stop holding your breath and let the wild air fill you?

Sarvenaz Saadat has captured this exact feeling of suspended time in her work titled Peekaboo. It is a quiet study of presence amidst a rugged, tangled landscape. Does this stillness reach out and touch you, too?