The Kindling Before Dawn

The shadows stretch their fingers long tonight, across the kitchen floor where laundry piles and worries bloom. I search for switch or spark to conquer night, but silence is the tenant in this room.

Yet even here, where doubt begins to fray the hem, a quiet pulse remains beneath the floor. Like embers buried deep within the stem, the morning waits behind a locked and bolted door.

He does not chase the darkness with a shout, but breathes a steady light into the gray. He holds the wick when faith is flickering out, and turns the midnight tide toward the day.