Waking

There’s a breathless moment

between the night’s last dream

and morning's small acts-

light slipping

its pale fingers through the blinds,

a bird’s thin cry

shivering on the edge of the window.

Here, in this narrow seam between worlds,

we are all the same.

No names, no pasts,

just the soft ache of waking.

Bodies rising into themselves,

eyes still clouded, hands hesitant

as if the skin isn’t sure it’s home.

There is a silence we carry,

like a folded note,

unread but heavy,

when first we blink against the light.

All our small selves,

stitched into one long breath,

forget for an instant who we are.

But the memory comes.

Slowly, we stitch ourselves back-

the weight of a name on the tongue,

the shape of sorrow or joy that fits the ribs.

And like waves,

we return to the shore of our lives,

remembering how to be human again.

In that moment, all things feel possible,

yet already lost-   

the quiet mourning of potential that slips away,

unspoken, unheld,

like the dream we were just about to understand.