The clock exhales a trembling breath,
its pulse a shiver in the spine of time.
I wait,
unmoored in the ebb of minutes,
where silence holds the marrow of the night
and shadows braid themselves with longing.

The moon hangs, not as a goddess,
but as a seamstress,
stitching the veil of night with frayed intentions.
Each star—a pinprick in the fabric,
leaking a light too distant to warm.

I have heard the hymn of the ivy,
creeping on stone,
its whisper a litany of slow conquests,
its green, a defiance of winter’s gray.
And I wonder—
who will sing for me when my roots no longer hold?

Beneath my skin, rivers stall.
What was once a tempest
is now the measured drip
of something no longer daring to spill.
There is a violence in stillness,
in the way silence sharpens itself against my thoughts.

But let me tell you—
in the shadow of this unraveling,
I have made my peace
with the slow decay of mirrors,
with the fracturing of names.
The sparrow need not call itself a sparrow
to fly.

And when the end comes—
(oh, it is coming)
it will not be the roar of oceans folding into themselves,
nor the shattering of celestial harps.
It will be the sound
of a match extinguished in water,
the faint hiss
of something small,
forgotten,
forever.