Afar, The Glimmer

It was the hour when dusk shed its skin,

Rough as slate, under a bruised horizon.

And she stood, distant, within the darkness

Where shadows grew thick and soft,

Like breath heavy in a winter throat.

Her eyes wandered far, searching for the pulse

Of a light too faint to claim her.

In the deep folds of the blackened earth,

Where the wind hummed secrets against hollow bones,

She traced the outlines of forgotten paths,

Carved into the silence like phantom arteries.

The night curled tight around her like a lover—

But its touch was cold,

An embrace without memory.

Still, there was something ahead.

A glow, a flicker, a trembling thread of flame,

Pressed against the farthest edges of her sight.

It called to her—

Not like the beckoning of salvation,

But a whisper barely rising above the noise

Of her unlit hours.

And she walked.

Through the mazes spun of midnight blue,

Through the weight of shadows thick as wool.

Her feet, bare and raw, never faltered—

Each step an offering to the darkened world

That held her with relentless affection.

She had known this journey too well,

Felt its rhythms hum deep in her bones.

Yet still, the light hovered.

Afar, the glimmer—

Always just out of reach,

Dancing on the precipice of belief,

Drawing her in with its delicate pulse.

And she knew, as she moved through the quiet chaos,

That the light would never grow closer,

Nor she dimmer,

For they were twinned in a silent orbit,

Bound by the distance that would never break.

So she kept walking,

A silhouette etched in the night’s heavy hand,

Eyes fixed on the faint shimmer

That burned not for her,

But with her,

Both trapped in the slow spin

Of a world that had no need of dawn.