the threads are carefully snipped one by one. what remains begins to fray. the fibers spindle down to nothing, the weave coming apart until it just disappears.
the earth still spins its dance. the moon laughs. the sun ever nurses the forest floor, the moss, all the tendrils of life pushing up where forgotten fibers brew the soil.
I stand before my window, gazing out into the deepening night skies, searching for that first star upon which to make my wish. There it is — winking happily at me, as if it is not beyond comprehension in its beauty and mystery. My lips move silently with my tender wish. The star listens and sparkles reassuringly. I gaze long, slowly taking in this star, and then that star, and stars beyond. Ah, look there! I see my wish as it sails on through the galaxy, blessed by all.
The birds begin to sing before the light comes. The voices reach me through the windows opened to the soft rustles and creaks of the dark hours. They pierce the magic time of furtive shadows, clear and urgent and free.
Is it song? Or is it speech? Is it utter joy? Do they call lovers, call children? Do they call me, call us, call all?
The strain oscillates through the air, an abstraction, cryptically enfolding me. The darkened space in which I lay irresistibly expands to the trees, the skies, the stars. I flutter up to the birds and sing with them the chaotic anthem of our souls. No beat, no refrain, no syncopation, no rhythm at all but we thrum with the cadence of life.
The birds begin to sing before the light comes. They sing the primal language, the one we all know. My feet and hands speak it, the tongue of the breathing earth, the pulsing star. We are all there together, for that brief moment before the sun snaps its fingers before our eyes, at the feral edges.
So dreams will have to do for now. Imagination defies the story to which we have agreed. Later, I will remember what we all know to be true, and sing again with the birds at the outer fringe of night.