We move in a collective hover, a suspended breath over the world’s cracked ribs, waiting for the moment the silence begins to jangle with the sound of keys, of tools, of voices finding the same frequency and strength.
I hold you close, not just one, but the whole frayed edge of us. I hold the neighbour with the tired eyes and the stranger whose shadow overlaps with mine on the pavement. I keep you on my mind when the lights flicker, knowing that if the grid fails, we are the only warmth left.
I feel for you in the morrow; your hunger is a ghost in my own throat. There is a beauty here that has nothing to do with symmetry, it’s the rugged, grit-toothed grace of a block that refuses to break.
I see the way you carry your history, and I want what you have: that unshakeable spine, that quiet resilience that doesn’t ask for permission to exist. I am enamoured by you, by the way a thousand hands can reach out to greet the same sunrise and actually catch it.
When we finally lose control of the old fears, the walls we built to stay ‘safe’ and ‘solitary’ may then start to crumble. There in that wreckage, we find the only love strong enough to hold the weight of the world, and it doesn’t include our Spiritual faiths; it only includes our love, our desire to keep the world in one piece.
© 2026 Steve Gray
