What do you do when the night won’t answer?
When darkness just stares back,
daring you to blink first?
The stars twirl like tigers of light,
tearing through the black of a liquid sky,
Their fangs of fire gnawing at the dark.
Each dying flicker hanging suspended,
Like a poem caught mid-breath,
Like a whispered truth too heavy to voice.
I stand there—
alone.
A moon-fisher
in a sea of wilted flowers,
casting lines into the void.
I use pieces of my own heart for bait,
hoping something will bite,
That something will pull back from the dark.
And I wait.
I wait for the silence to shatter,
For the night to answer,
So that my dreams stop bleeding
into my waking hours.
I wait.
But the stars just keep on burning out in silence,
While my dreams keep dripping,
leaking like open wounds
into every second I’m awake.
Do you feel it too?
That pull,
like you’re out there casting lines into the night,
but all you reel in are fragments,
Slivers of light that fade before you even get to touch them?
I feel the weight of a thousand unsaid things,
The ghosts of every “almost,” and every “maybe.”
I breathe in the beauty of the night’s funeral veil,
Of this sky that won’t speak,
Of the void that won’t echo.
And I wonder,
I wonder how many nights like this the stars have seen?
how many souls like mine they’ve watched
with that pale, quiet gaze.
And still, they keep twirling.
Still, they blaze,
while I wait,
while I bleed,
while I hold my breath and hope
that maybe—just maybe—
the next flicker will light the way,
That it will spill some hint,
some clue that there's meaning hidden in their glow,
a reason buried in their fire.
I raise my hands to the heavens,
fingers outstretched like branches stripped bare,
and I beg the silence to break—
I beg the stars to stop their silent spin
and just speak.
But they don’t.
And I’m left here
As the silence falls around me like ash.
And then— I realize
what if—
what if it’s not about the stars?
What if the silence is ours to break?
What if it's us who must blaze, tear through the dark like fangs of fire,
to carve our own path through the endless black?
What if the stars are silent because
they’ve already spoken?
What if they’re waiting for us to be the flicker, the spark,
the answer in the void that doesn't echo back?
What if this silence isn’t emptiness
but space—
space for us to fill?
What if we… stopped waiting?
What if we burned to ignite against the black,
to become tigers of light,
daring the dark to blink first?
What if we bared our teeth to the night,
Howled to the heavens, let the weight fall from our bones
Peeled back our skin to set our fire loose?
What if we are the dawn?
What if we are the roar, the pulse,
The voice in the void,
the beacon we’re reaching for,
The answer we seek?
What if… we are the night’s reply?