The Hour Before

The night exhales its last blue breath, pulling stars back into themselves. A cardinal waits on the fence post, head tilted as if listening to the hinge of the world turning toward light.

In the stillness before the chorus, each shadow holds its own small prayer— the grass bends without wind, the dew-soaked web holds galaxies in its eight-pointed geometry.

Nothing moves yet everything arrives: the blush rising along the horizon, a sound like wings folding, the world remembering its color in increments too small to see.

This is the hour we're never awake for, the patient hour that asks nothing, gives everything— the boundary between dream and day where even doubt dissolves like sugar in warm light.