Reveries’ Dance Card

Morning begins simply,
a coffee cup sweating on the counter,
the radio clearing its throat.

Outside, a sparrow startles at its shadow
like the world has just coughed.
Phones blink awake with headlines
stacked like overturned furniture,
but the sink still drips,

and light still finds the dust
floating as if nothing has changed.

By midday the air grows crowded.
Sirens braid with stock tickers,
satellites whisper over our roofs,
maps flare red like fevers under glass.

We scroll until our thumbs ache,
trying to read smoke as scripture,
trying to remember
when language became shrapnel.
Every border feels provisional,
every sentence loaded,
history pacing the room
like a big animal deciding whether to charge.

Then…

The afternoon fractures.
Sky split by contrails like chalk marks
on a blackboard no one can erase.
Drums of outrage pound through cables,
missiles rehearsed as metaphors,
hands hover over buttons
the way storms pause before breaking trees.
The planet feels over-wound,
a music box cranked past mercy,
each nation a lit match
pretending it’s only checking the flame.

Evening comes anyway.
At the table, someone I love laughs
with their mouth full of bread.
A dish clinks; a candle gutters but stays.
Up close, the ordinary glows,
warm hands, shared salt, a dog’s sigh
as if the world were still trustworthy.
It isn’t certainty, only a pilot light,
but history has stumbled like this before
and somehow caught its balance.

I cup the flame without owning it,
and for tonight,
that is enough to keep the dark polite,

letting me see beyond the shadows.