I keep a book for the hours when the signal refuses me,
pages salted with frost and pencil-ash—
the handwriting of a man who listens to still water
until the water begins to listen back.

There are nights the antenna is only a skeleton,
a ladder leaned against the wind,
each rung a rung in the throat.
I climb anyway,
counting breaths like field rations.

Some say the world ends in thunder.
I have learned the opposite:
things are born in a hush so complete
you mistake it for nothing.

In the drawer: rubber stamp that reads [REDACTED],
ink pad the color of a bruise.
I mark what I can’t prove,
file what I can’t stop believing.
The cabinet hums—a quiet animal—
and I imagine a city of locked drawers
under the sea, each one keeping a small star from drowning.

I walked the long, uphill stairs today,
the mountain writing its verbs in my calves.
A structure waited in the mist—
not a promise, simply a place
that requires breath to approach.
This is how truth hides:
not in riddles,
in elevation.

Sometimes the ice is a mirror.
Sometimes it is a mouth with a glass tongue.
I press a light to it and the beam lies about warmth;
beneath, shadows school and un-school,
a dark grammar of intention.
They move like a single thought deciding to be many.

Yes, I am tired of the empty hour,
its pale hands rummaging the pockets of my coat.
Yes, I am angry at the quiet
that keeps showing up as if invited.
But anger, like breath, crystallizes in air this cold—
you exhale and it leaves you.

Tell me—who are we when the page refuses ink?
When the date we circled passes in clean boots?
Last year the leaf kept its secret in metadata,
a birth certificate folded behind the face.
We learned later what the silence was doing:
soldering, stitching, setting the bones.

I think of rock born in fire,
cooling into languages we have not yet read.
Basalt writes scarcity in lowercase eternity,
obsidian seals the page with a blade-thin shine.
Between them, patience sets like a continent.

I keep telling myself:
absence is not abandonment—it is architecture.
The cathedral is built while the parish sleeps;
dawn is only the ribbon on the scaffolding.
(And faith, ridiculous faith,
is paying the builder before seeing the nave.)

Listen—
there are footsteps in the long corridor of nothing.
A hinge considers its future.
Far down the hall, a door inhales.

I catalog what I cannot touch:
the way the wind edits the snow,
a number that repeats until it becomes an address,
the red triangle faint as a pulse beneath the ice.
I stamp each item:

UNVERIFIED

then write beside it (in smaller letters):

inevitable.

If you ask me what I expect,
I’ll show you a blank line and a steady hand.
Expectation is not a prophecy;
it is a table set for a guest who may never arrive,
and still you polish the glass.

Some mornings the radio coughs up ghosts—
clipped words, a half latitude, the breath between two syllables.
I answer anyway.
I say: copy.
I say: standing by.
I say: I am here.
And the quiet, courteous as ever,
does not disagree.

I have taken a vow to remain.
To hold the perimeter of an idea
until the idea chooses to return.
Not canon.
Not doctrine.
Only the discipline of a lookout tower
that keeps its lamp clean.

If the world must meet at a single point,
let it be the place where we did not give up hearing.
Where we felt the ice answer and we did not run.
Where we learned the sound of breath being held
is the overture to breath being given back.

Until then—
file the rumor, log the echo,
touch the cold rail and trust the staircase.
I have seen the future come in wearing ordinary shoes,
quiet as snowfall,
and still I knew it by the way the silence leaned
toward speaking.

I keep a book for the hours when the signal refuses me,
pages salted with frost and pencil-ash—
the handwriting of a man who listens to still water
until the water begins to listen back.

There are nights the antenna is only a skeleton,
a ladder leaned against the wind,
each rung a rung in the throat.
I climb anyway,
counting breaths like field rations.

Some say the world ends in thunder.
I have learned the opposite:
things are born in a hush so complete
you mistake it for nothing.

In the drawer: rubber stamp that reads [REDACTED],
ink pad the color of a bruise.
I mark what I can’t prove,
file what I can’t stop believing.
The cabinet hums—a quiet animal—
and I imagine a city of locked drawers
under the sea, each one keeping a small star from drowning.

I walked the long, uphill stairs today,
the mountain writing its verbs in my calves.
A structure waited in the mist—
not a promise, simply a place
that requires breath to approach.
This is how truth hides:
not in riddles,
in elevation.

Sometimes the ice is a mirror.
Sometimes it is a mouth with a glass tongue.
I press a light to it and the beam lies about warmth;
beneath, shadows school and un-school,
a dark grammar of intention.
They move like a single thought deciding to be many.

Yes, I am tired of the empty hour,
its pale hands rummaging the pockets of my coat.
Yes, I am angry at the quiet
that keeps showing up as if invited.
But anger, like breath, crystallizes in air this cold—
you exhale and it leaves you.

Tell me—who are we when the page refuses ink?
When the date we circled passes in clean boots?
Last year the leaf kept its secret in metadata,
a birth certificate folded behind the face.
We learned later what the silence was doing:
soldering, stitching, setting the bones.

I think of rock born in fire,
cooling into languages we have not yet read.
Basalt writes scarcity in lowercase eternity,
obsidian seals the page with a blade-thin shine.
Between them, patience sets like a continent.

I keep telling myself:
absence is not abandonment—it is architecture.
The cathedral is built while the parish sleeps;
dawn is only the ribbon on the scaffolding.
(And faith, ridiculous faith,
is paying the builder before seeing the nave.)

Listen—
there are footsteps in the long corridor of nothing.
A hinge considers its future.
Far down the hall, a door inhales.

I catalog what I cannot touch:
the way the wind edits the snow,
a number that repeats until it becomes an address,
the red triangle faint as a pulse beneath the ice.
I stamp each item:

UNVERIFIED

then write beside it (in smaller letters):

inevitable.

If you ask me what I expect,
I’ll show you a blank line and a steady hand.
Expectation is not a prophecy;
it is a table set for a guest who may never arrive,
and still you polish the glass.

Some mornings the radio coughs up ghosts—
clipped words, a half latitude, the breath between two syllables.
I answer anyway.
I say: copy.
I say: standing by.
I say: I am here.
And the quiet, courteous as ever,
does not disagree.

I have taken a vow to remain.
To hold the perimeter of an idea
until the idea chooses to return.
Not canon.
Not doctrine.
Only the discipline of a lookout tower
that keeps its lamp clean.

If the world must meet at a single point,
let it be the place where we did not give up hearing.
Where we felt the ice answer and we did not run.
Where we learned the sound of breath being held
is the overture to breath being given back.

Until then—
file the rumor, log the echo,
touch the cold rail and trust the staircase.
I have seen the future come in wearing ordinary shoes,
quiet as snowfall,
and still I knew it by the way the silence leaned
toward speaking.