The Vessel of the Unheard Song

Already, the air has gone still--

not empty,

but full of something unsaid,

a silence older than sorrow

where songs not sung still live,

waiting at the edge of breath.

Ithil keeps watch,

silver-threaded across the void,

his light a quiet witness

who does not weep.

Beneath him,

the sleeper turns in skin,

red rivers rising, coiling,

memory pressed into flesh

beneath the bones of time.

Breath moves in tides--

not wind,

but the rhythm that once stirred

the first waters.

It touches the broken places,

pulling pain to shore

then letting it recede.

Stillness is not silence.

It is the pause

where the Song once lived,

a note held between heartbeats

in the mind of Ilúvatar.

And here,

grief is not ended--

but hallowed.

At the glass edge of night,

peace gathers.

Ithil dips beneath the sea,

his last light trailing across

waters that remember.