On the roof I sat and watched the sun step aside for the night, the cooling air nestling against my body. My limited view of the world before me. My care stretched beyond the expression of my gathered thoughts. Much further did the rays carry me than words could ever admit. My fingers soared higher, laced to my heart, exposing me to the light. I braced my life for the impact of a tomorrow I couldn’t fathom and held tight to every ripple my chambers emitted. I sang the melody of a boy turned man, through the shades slowly turning on day, leaning into the dark of nightfall. Then I closed my eyes and held the image of the sun inside of the womb of my soul. And held, and held, and held.

When I returned, I had not moved, not an inch. In my stillness, I felt the pulse of the world below. Its quiet hum calling me into attendance. With the approaching dark I watched humans bring light to their homes. I smiled and reached out my heart to their locked doors and knocked. Silently I entered every household and listened to life at the dinner table. I whispered their prayers in a universal echo, muttered their dreams and sorrows like they were my own, then slipped out of their proof of life, leaving their display untouched, yet profoundly witnessed.

I am not them. And yet in ways curious to myself, I love them. I embrace their fleeting mark on earth. Here sun meets seed, warms the soil, and beckons life to summon the minerals needed to extend toward the light. As I sit and watch: seeds sprout, seeds die. I am a sentinel on a roof, in a time, heartbeats gathered in my chest, simply watching the sunset.

We are lonely at times. In streaks of color and fading fabric we devote our selves to stillness. We run our innermost along the smooth spine of ribbons, hanging over doorways. They beckon us to enter. In slip our souls, deep into forgotten passages like roots dwelling in dark spaces, where we commemorate our ancestors, and where only the heart affords light.

I fall off a leaf.

On and on – rowan and walnut – I lift the heavy blanket from my shoulders and lay it across the table – cherry. There loneliness meets light, finds rest, finds recognition, stumbles towards a young child’s pointed finger; „look“. Then, evaporates: all seen is freed. Unmasked and spilled into the embracing forest. Of seed rises tree, and branch, and leaf…mother, father, brother, sister. Their roots run in my veins. What love, what source of life entwined inside of me. I am at peace.