a bark from a caracal, somewhere off to the left

not quite near, but too close to ignore

and a tree holding its shape in the blush of sunrise.

the horizon doesn’t move,

but something in it hums.

someone said too much, maybe.

or maybe just enough to fracture the silence.

a voice, cracking,

not from sorrow exactly

but from that strange cousin of tomorrow,

a yesterday

that doesn’t cry,

only clenches and stares

at the space between what was said

and what was meant.

there’s no storm here.

just loss with a different texture.

the kind that sits,

that waits,

that hums like a wire left live.