The house at four a.m. is its own country, a republic of small sounds — the refrigerator’s democratic hum, the dog rearranging his allegiances on the couch.
I have come downstairs for water and stayed for something harder to name.
There is a quality of light at this hour that belongs to no one, that has not yet been recruited by morning or remembered by night.
It falls through the window like a question that does not require answering — only standing in.
I think of all the things I meant to say and didn’t, all the doors I walked through without noticing the threshold.
The world will start again in two hours. The birds will begin their committee meeting. The coffee will make its argument.
But right now there is only this — the dark holding still, and me inside it, briefly also still.