Between the Quiet

Morning waits in the hinge of dark, light gathering like held breath, the world not yet settled into color.

Your shadow on the wall is still learning its shape, fingers tracing the seam where night gives way to definition.

We are all the intermediate things— the word caught between the thought and the speaking, the moment between asleep and the weight of day, the pause where the music lives.

A bird calls. Silence answers. Neither is more true than the other, only that together they make the place where we come to listen.