In a real, dark night of the soul, it is always three o’clock in the morning. – F. Scott Fitzgerald

Billow bright, our faces flung open—
Cracked from the top down for a pair of words;
A ditch full of grace, caked in worlds,
sloughing off mortification in a curious smack of soul.

It’s all right, I say, as you steal lungs for your own
inhaling. Sometimes, you can’t arrest morning like a criminal. It’s a
slow burn—a gap for tending.