The Tightrope Between Hope and Refusal

White cloth gathers like low tide around my knees. Headstones stand like mute witnesses, their names eroded into the same sentence: temporary. Skin pricks in the wind, a soft armor almost nothing; every breath proves its own expiry date. People did this to each other, I think, the way crows do it to wheat: harvest without hunger, cruelty mistaken for appetite. Overhead the universe keeps its vacant appointment, clockwork untroubled by our cuts. It offers a glossy brochure—destiny, meaning, stars—then forgets the address. Still, some stubborn cell inside me lights a candle and calls it maybe. Maybe there’s a room past the air where mercy remembers our faces. Maybe there’s only sleep, and that too could be gentle. I touch the cracked stone, listening for warmth. There isn’t. I keep listening anyway. Hope begins as refusal, and sometimes that’s enough.