No Road Answers

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published I stride forward though the night collapses, the stars, snuffed candles in a fearsome dream, the winds scream sermons of doubt along an unseen road. My hand, trembling, still opens to the call. The road cracks, it splits but I am a river, not a stone. Where the heavens split and silence reigns, my steps draw no blessing, yet I go. I ask not for the easy torch, nor the clarion call of certainties. I ask for the storm. I ask for the silence between bolts of fire, where decisions root deep in the ash of what might have been. I bear the weight of a thousand unborn mornings I listen to the trees in their muttered council Go, or be undone. You, whisperer of doubts, demon in the thickets of fear you too are part of me. I build a bridge of your howls and walk barefoot still. Not all who dream are safe, but those who turn back, are lost. And though no voice answers across the dark, and though no hand rises from the blackened fields, I forge forward, clothed in broken light. There, beyond the battered gates is the simple shining of my own soul, unashamed, unbowed, unburied.