The Moment the Earth Listens Back

The world tilts forward - quiet as a breath,

a held-in hush between the now and next.

The gravel shifts; the trees grow still as death,

the sky rewrites its calm in foreign text.

I stand - or seem to - on the edge of change,

the shoulder soft, the guardrail bending back.

The valley stretches out, aloof and strange,

as if it’s waiting for a final crack.

No signal flares, no thunderclap, no sign -

just air that tightens, just the hands grown cold,

just time, no longer parallel to mine,

beginning to unravel what it holds.

The brake is gone. The slope becomes the law.

And I, unasked, descend into the draw.