The night folds close, heavy like cold stone.
She lies beside me, her breath shallow beneath thick shadows,
her hair a black river pooling on white linen,
each strand tangled like roots in dark earth.

Her eyes carry dawn’s first fracture,
a fragile ember locked inside glass,
depths where silence cracks and fires spark,
hopes burning like distant wildfires in wind-swept hills,
ghost flames licking at cracked sky.

Her beauty exhales, a hymn carved from frost and ash,
a steady pulse threading through bone and marrow,
sealing quiet with the scent of old-world smoke
rising slow from cold altars beneath a sky bruised with clouds,
casting shadows sharp as frozen blades.

In that suspended quiet, I hold firm.
I stir awake, as if my core had waited
buried beneath frozen soil,
an isolated flame kindled by hidden storms,
finding its mirror in the fragile blaze of her gaze.