In the hush of a dawn that has not yet arrived,
where the edge of the world is a frayed silver thread,
an angel reclines on a cloud-woven divan,
a book in her lap like a sleeping god’s head.
Its pages are rivers—ink flowing upstream,
each sentence a fish with a pearl in its mouth;
she reads with one finger dipped deep in the stream,
and the water remembers the taste of the south.
The cover is dusk, stitched with comet-tail seams,
the spine is a mountain that no one has climbed;
she opens it slowly, as one who redeems
a promise once broken by hands that were blind.
Her wings are translucent—thin membranes of light,
veined with the maps of migrations unborn;
they flutter like pages caught sudden in flight,
and settle again when the reading is sworn.
She reads of the baker who kneaded despair
into loaves that rose golden at three in the morn;
the margin grows yeast, and the air smells of prayer,
and hunger forgets it was ever forlorn.
A candle of beeswax, made soft by the sun,
burns low at her elbow—no wick, only flame;
it drips into letters that melt and rerun
into stories that never stay quite the same.
She lingers where lovers have quarreled and parted,
and traces their names till the rift starts to mend;
the ink turns to honey, the quarrel to hearted,
and endings unwrite themselves back to begin.
Her halo is quiet—a ring of small bells
that chime without sound when a sinner repents;
she listens, then turns to the chapter that tells
of debts paid in silence, of mercy unspent.
The book is a garden; each word is a seed
that blossoms in colors no spectrum has known;
she waters with starlight, she prunes with a need
to keep every petal from growing alone.
She reads of the soldier who laid down his gun
to carry a child through the smoke and the fire;
the page becomes wings, and the child becomes sun,
and war turns to ash in the breath of desire.
When thunder threatens the hush of her room,
she closes the book with a kiss on the spine;
the storm kneels outside like a penitent groom,
and rain writes forgiveness in soft anodyne.
Then, rising, she shelves it where galaxies lean
like scholars awaiting the turn of a page;
the angel steps back, and the silence is clean—
a world newly written, a debt newly paid.
And somewhere a stranger looks up from the street,
smiles without reason, and offers a hand;
an angel has read him back into the sweet
unfolding of mercy no heart can withstand.
where the edge of the world is a frayed silver thread,
an angel reclines on a cloud-woven divan,
a book in her lap like a sleeping god’s head.
Its pages are rivers—ink flowing upstream,
each sentence a fish with a pearl in its mouth;
she reads with one finger dipped deep in the stream,
and the water remembers the taste of the south.
The cover is dusk, stitched with comet-tail seams,
the spine is a mountain that no one has climbed;
she opens it slowly, as one who redeems
a promise once broken by hands that were blind.
Her wings are translucent—thin membranes of light,
veined with the maps of migrations unborn;
they flutter like pages caught sudden in flight,
and settle again when the reading is sworn.
She reads of the baker who kneaded despair
into loaves that rose golden at three in the morn;
the margin grows yeast, and the air smells of prayer,
and hunger forgets it was ever forlorn.
A candle of beeswax, made soft by the sun,
burns low at her elbow—no wick, only flame;
it drips into letters that melt and rerun
into stories that never stay quite the same.
She lingers where lovers have quarreled and parted,
and traces their names till the rift starts to mend;
the ink turns to honey, the quarrel to hearted,
and endings unwrite themselves back to begin.
Her halo is quiet—a ring of small bells
that chime without sound when a sinner repents;
she listens, then turns to the chapter that tells
of debts paid in silence, of mercy unspent.
The book is a garden; each word is a seed
that blossoms in colors no spectrum has known;
she waters with starlight, she prunes with a need
to keep every petal from growing alone.
She reads of the soldier who laid down his gun
to carry a child through the smoke and the fire;
the page becomes wings, and the child becomes sun,
and war turns to ash in the breath of desire.
When thunder threatens the hush of her room,
she closes the book with a kiss on the spine;
the storm kneels outside like a penitent groom,
and rain writes forgiveness in soft anodyne.
Then, rising, she shelves it where galaxies lean
like scholars awaiting the turn of a page;
the angel steps back, and the silence is clean—
a world newly written, a debt newly paid.
And somewhere a stranger looks up from the street,
smiles without reason, and offers a hand;
an angel has read him back into the sweet
unfolding of mercy no heart can withstand.
I.
First angel: younger,
hair the color of wheat before harvest,
wings still learning their own weight.
He stands on the tower’s lip
where stone remembers hands that laid it.
The book is open like a wound
that hasn’t decided whether to heal.
His eyes—
two small dawns
trying not to blink.
II.
Second angel: older,
hair gone the white of ash after fire,
wings folded like closed libraries.
He stands on nothing but cloud,
a rock that forgot it was earth.
The book is heavier now,
pages thick with names
that have already been crossed out.
His eyes—
two quiet graves
where questions go to rest.
III.
Between them:
a century of silence
stretched like wire.
One reads the beginning,
the other the end,
and neither looks up
to see the other
is the same face
aged by the same light.
IV.
You watch from the third floor,
fan spinning,
phone at 19%,
generator coughing below.
The angels do not see you.
They never do.
But you see them—
two mirrors
reflecting the same lie:
that height is wisdom,
that wings are escape,
that a book can hold
what a pulse already knows.
V.
Truth:
they are both you.
One before the fall,
one after.
The tower is your spine.
The cloud is your breath.
The book is your hunger.
The wings—
just the ache
to be somewhere else
while staying exactly here.
First angel: younger,
hair the color of wheat before harvest,
wings still learning their own weight.
He stands on the tower’s lip
where stone remembers hands that laid it.
The book is open like a wound
that hasn’t decided whether to heal.
His eyes—
two small dawns
trying not to blink.
II.
Second angel: older,
hair gone the white of ash after fire,
wings folded like closed libraries.
He stands on nothing but cloud,
a rock that forgot it was earth.
The book is heavier now,
pages thick with names
that have already been crossed out.
His eyes—
two quiet graves
where questions go to rest.
III.
Between them:
a century of silence
stretched like wire.
One reads the beginning,
the other the end,
and neither looks up
to see the other
is the same face
aged by the same light.
IV.
You watch from the third floor,
fan spinning,
phone at 19%,
generator coughing below.
The angels do not see you.
They never do.
But you see them—
two mirrors
reflecting the same lie:
that height is wisdom,
that wings are escape,
that a book can hold
what a pulse already knows.
V.
Truth:
they are both you.
One before the fall,
one after.
The tower is your spine.
The cloud is your breath.
The book is your hunger.
The wings—
just the ache
to be somewhere else
while staying exactly here.
