The Glass Observatory

The telescope leans like a frozen question, aimed at the salt-strewn dark where ancient light arrives exhausted, having traveled through the velvet hollows of a billion silent years.

Dust motes dance in the amber spill of a dying desk lamp, tracing orbits around the inkwell— miniature worlds born of shadow and the slow vibration of the floorboards.

Outside, the wind is a whetstone sharpening the edges of the pines, while here, the silence is thick as resin, preserving the ghost of a breath held long ago against the cold glass.