Lighthouse
There is a light that does not ask
If you are ready to be found
It sweeps the same dark water
It swept an hour ago
Because that is the only thing
It knows how to be
I’ve been watching it from the window
Where sleep used to live
Three forty seven a.m.
And the mind seems to take the lighthouse
As a fond role model
It returns
Always returns
Even when it promised otherwise
I used to fight the waking
Pressed my face into the pillow
Like a confession
I wasn’t yet ready to make
But you cannot turn off a lighthouse
By wanting the dark
It doesn’t take requests,
Only routes
Insomnia isn’t the absence of rest
It is the presence of a light
That loves its job a little too much
Still sweeping the shore
For something that passed hours ago
Because no one ever told it
The emergency lay rest
With the same ship that brought it to shore
What comes through the window now
Is almost gentle
It doesn’t accuse or judge
Just touches the far wall
And drags itself away again
Like it knows your name
But is too polite to say it
You learn things in the small hours
That daylight buries
The particular weight of a house
Held around you like a breath
Which floorboards remember your footsteps
How silence has its own kind of weather
And a ceiling becomes something
You know too well
And somewhere past the glass
The lighthouse keeps its circuit
Faithful as something with nothing to prove
Unbothered by the ships that never came
Or the ones that came and didn’t need it
Still shining
Because that is the only thing
It was ever asked to do
I stopped asking for sleep around five
Made tea
Watched the beam go out across the water
One last time
It will do this whether I watch or not
That used to feel like loneliness
Tonight it feels like company.
May 24
May 24, 2026 at 10:04 AM UTC
Pickles
Do you remember your grandpa’s cabin?
Where signal vanished like mist at dawn
And silence held its breath beneath the pine
as you read to me, words drifting like wind
I tried to listen, I swear I did,
but sleep folded me soft into earth
When I woke, wildflowers wove
through the tangles of my hair,
and somewhere close,
a campfire whispered of stories half forgotten
Do you remember when I sat up,
and you were already watching
like an artist studying a half dreamed painting
I sank into the canvas of your gaze,
turned a shade of pastel red,
washed in watercolor pink
I haven't felt the same since
Do you remember the heat?
The forest bursting into prairie bloom
your brother on my shoulders as we ran
to the crooked hose behind the shack,
where laughter trickled
like cold water on bare skin,
and summer peeled itself
from our shoulders like old bark
I disappeared slowly,
like dew into moss
And you,
you found me in the hush of the woods,
your footsteps soft as memory
You brought new color to the trees,
new focus to the canvas,
as if your eyes rewrote the world
I remember the cliff
that stood like a cathedral above us
We climbed, and when we rose,
the valley opened like a hymn
moose grazing in the hush,
fish racing ribbons in the river
And you,
the way your braids caught the wind,
the little bump at the end of your nose,
eyes deep brown turning amber
in the mercy of morning light
I forgot how to swim
I don’t remember what came between
the midnight tickle fights
and the blueberry muffins at dawn
only that you wore my shoes
with the laces pulled loose
like a secret you left behind
But I remember your grandpa and I
talking of our bikes,
the sun leaning low,
while you slept in your usual way
a slow kind of magic
I waited
But time came like it always does
and we left,
Drove home,
Stopped for pickles halfway there
I didn’t break the seal, my souvenir of that forest
May 24
May 24, 2026 at 10:02 AM UTC
Black Hole
You were a star once.
I think about that more than most.
The kind that burned
without knowing anything was watching.
And when you had nothing left to give,
you didn’t scatter.
You pulled yourself inward
until the word inward
lost its meaning.
I’ve been trying to learn that.
They mapped the universe and found you everywhere,
quiet anchors at the centers of things,
not terrorizing, just holding.
It is strange to find comfort
in something that does not offer it.
I sat with the numbers once:
93 billion light years of observable universe,
two trillion galaxies,
and not one of them
consulted me before forming.
And somehow that is the most peaceful thing
anyone has ever told me.
I used to carry the weight of being perceived.
Of mattering in rooms
that would forget me by Tuesday.
You carry the weight of everything
and make no face about it.
You don’t explain yourself.
Not to the ones with careful instruments,
not to the ones who named you
after the darkest word they knew.
You exist at a frequency we don’t have ears for yet.
I wonder what waits past the edge of knowing,
where the rules go quiet
and something stranger takes over.
Not nothing. Never nothing.
Just a language
we haven’t been patient enough to learn.
I’m not afraid of the forgetting.
That my name will dissolve
the way all names do,
given enough time and enough silence.
Because somewhere right now a star is collapsing
into something more powerful
than it ever was luminous.
And it doesn’t need anyone to witness it to be true.
Neither do I.
“The universe is under no obligation to make sense to you” -Neil deGrasse Tyson
May 23
May 23, 2026 at 8:16 PM UTC