Suspended

In the slant of afternoon light dust spirals like tiny constellations, each mote a whole universe catching fire before it falls.

We mistake these moments for emptiness— the space between heartbeats, the pause before speaking, the breath held in a room where someone has just left.

But there: a particle rises against gravity's pull, suspended in the shaft of gold, belonging to neither air nor light but living in the marriage of both.

This is what we are too— brief conjunctions, visible only when the sun knows where to look, burning in the distance between what we say and what we mean.