Morning's Arithmetic

The hours pile like stones unweighted, unmeasured— each one a small breath held before the world remembers its own name.

In the dark, your hands know the shape of things your eyes cannot yet see: the doorway's smooth frame, the exact temperature of waiting.

There is a mathematics to silence, a language made only of pauses, and somewhere beyond the window, a bird is learning its first word.

The sky holds its breath longer than you can, but not by much.