Before the Bells

Mist clings to the oak, each leaf a small lantern of unreleased light. The world holds its breath before the first bell.

Streets wear their quiet like silk— no voices yet to stitch the morning into shape. A sparrow tests a note, then thinks better.

In this pale hour, everything is possibility: the day unmade, the night not yet released, standing between them.

The bells will come. The rush will come. But now—this clean space, this unmarked page, this breath before the plunge.