(A Vigil in Shadow)

I walked where dawn had not yet stirred,
Where even whispers feared a word—
A field of ash, or poppy flame,
Or dreams too dead to hold a name.

She sat—not posed, but merely stayed,
As prayers do, lost in lips that prayed.
Not silence, no—but something near,
The hollow gasp behind the fear.

Her eyes were voids where stars had fled,
Too weary now to mourn the dead.
No mirror, no—an echo, frail,
A fading hymn, a ghosted trail.

No speech between us, breath was all—
And breath, it seemed, had learned to fall.
Yet in that stillness, deep and bare,
I felt a need that hung like air.

Not mercy moved me, but a grief
That sought, in her, some small relief—
Recognition, raw and dim,
As if the dusk had called to limb.

She looked—perhaps she thought me flame.
She looked—and found I’d lost my name.
And yet, in wrong, we both were right:
The sky was aching with the light.

No end she bore, no birth had I.
No soul, no song, no lullaby.
We breathed—and lo, the field grew whole,
With death, and dawn, and one lost soul.

Then off I stepped—not from, but to
Whatever breaks the black in blue.
And still, beyond what eyes can see—
The light begins remembering me.