The Foundry of Small Hours

Something is being made in the hours no one claims — between the last dog barking and the first truck shifting gears on the overpass.

I have lain here listening to the house contract around me, each plank remembering the tree it was, each nail recalling the hammer's brief, persuasive argument.

Memory works like this too: not a cabinet but a furnace, melting the day's careful shapes into slag and new alloy, pouring them into molds I did not choose.

By morning I will find a stranger's convictions cooling on my workbench, beautiful and heavy, smelling of iron and sleep.

I will carry them anyway — these things forged in the foundry of small hours, where I was both the metal and the heat.