Solstice

The sun gives up early, slipping out the back door
like someone who knows they’ve overstayed their welcome.
By late afternoon the sky is already bruised,
a slow-moving storm of ink and cold breath.

The longest night arrives without ceremony.
Streetlights blink awake one by one,
their halos trembling in the wind
as if even they’re not sure they can handle
what’s coming.

The world feels paused –
a held breath, a skipped heartbeat,
a hush that settles over rooftops
and creeps under doors.

Out in the fields beyond town,
the trees stand like a congregation of silhouettes,
their branches raised in some ancient,
untranslatable prayer.

The ground is stiff with frost,
cracking softly underfoot
like old bones remembering weather
from centuries ago.

Somewhere an owl calls out,
a low, resonant note that feels less like sound
and more like a reminder
that darkness has its own custodians.

And yet the night hums –
not with menace, but with a strange,
almost tender gravity.

As if the world is leaning closer,
whispering that this is the hinge of the year,
the pivot point,
the place where endings and beginnings
blur into the same breath.

People sleep behind their windows,
unaware of the quiet negotiations happening
between shadow and dawn.

But you – wanderer, insomniac,
keeper of small, stubborn hopes –
you feel the pull of it.

The reminder that light is a fragile thing,
and still it returns.
That even the longest night
has a seam somewhere,
a thin line where tomorrow
is already leaking through.

So you stand there,
listening to the cold wind thread itself
through the bare branches,
and imagine your own vow –
not carved in stone,
but carried in breath:
To keep walking.
To keep watching.
To keep a spark alive
Even when the dark feels endless.

N.P.: “More” – Miazma