Nocturne in Bare Feet

Nocturne in Bare Feet

The house exhaled; I slipped the clock and wandered off the sheet,

Let midnight find its lullaby in nocturne, bare of feet.

The tiles kept cool the way a hush keeps secrets under glass;

I crossed the kitchen’s moonlit squares and stepped into the grass.

~~

The street was rinsed in indigo; the lamplight learned to a crawl,

and every puddle sang my name in cursive, soft and low.

My soles read braille from pebbled paths, from cracks that split and meet—

The city wrote a gentle psalm I learned by heart and heart.

~~

A moth explained the porchlight’s pull; the oak rehearsed a sway;

I matched my breathing to the branch and put my guard away.

Your window kept a sleeping glow—one mercy, small and sweet;

I bowed to it the way the tide keeps bowing to the street.

~~

No shoes to teach a marching beat; the cadence went to ground.

I let the silence choose the note; the world became the sound.

A fox unstitched the alley’s edge and threaded dark with neat;

Its eyes were coins the night had flipped and bid me not retreat.

~~

I thought of everything I’ve laced, the tightness and the ache—

How sometimes freedom isn’t loud, but simply what we slake.

So I unknotted yesterday and laid it by the seat,

Then walked until the stars agreed to hum beneath my feet.

~~

By dawn, I owned a smaller hush, a lighter kind of truth.

The stairs forgot to creak at me; the air remembered you.

I washed the dew from tired toes and kept the quiet’s beat—

a song I found when I was found: the night in bare, brave feet.