Threshold Light

Morning suspended between frost and thaw— the air holds its breath, uncertain, while shadows stretch longer than yesterday across ground still hard with winter.

A single bird calls from the laurel, testing the season like a voice in an empty room. The light falls differently now, sharper, more honest, cutting through branches that have forgotten how to bud.

Spring waits just beyond the threshold, gathering its green insistence, but today belongs to neither world: not quite gone, not yet arrived, the most beautiful moment of arriving itself.

In this hesitation, everything is possible— the snow could return, or the first leaf could unfurl and we would never know the difference between hope and memory.