The Hours Before

The hours before sunrise are someone else's country— a place where shadows still govern, where the world holds its breath between what was and what arrives next.

Nothing moves but light, imperceptible as snow filling a river, and somewhere a bird remembers it should sing.

We are all waiting here, our hands full of darkness, our hearts keeping time with a clock that hasn't yet been invented.

The threshold has no edges, no clear line between the possible and the lived— just this soft pressing forward, this gentle opening of what we thought was sealed.