Amber Hour

The amber hour comes late now, slanting through bare branches like a memory searching for its shape— sharp and diminished all at once.

What it touches it names: dust motes become planets, the ordinary coffee cup glows like amber, and you see clearly what you've forgotten.

But the light also erases. Shadow swallows the corners, and the things you wanted to examine slip back into their dark corners.

Still, you wait for it each day— that brief amber blessing, the world made visible and strange, before it folds back into grey.