The Blue Hour

The sky drinks the last of the copper, straining gold through the teeth of the pines. Shadows stretch, thin and hungry, erasing the sharp edges of the day.

A cool silence settles in the valley, the weight of violet air on the skin. Birds tuck their songs into cedar boughs, leaving the world to the moth and the owl.

Between the breathing and the dark, the horizon is a bruised ribbon of silk. Nothing stays, yet nothing is lost, only folded into the pockets of the night.