It's Still Life

An Ode to Dawn (Rewritten with Salt & Ether)

The sun licks its copper fingers,
turns eyelids into gilded scripture—
awake, awake, awake—
each blink a hex
against night’s failed coup.

Breath arrives—unpaid, unblessed—
thoughts chime like cathedral glass
in the cage of maybe,
where silence brews
in chamomile steam
beside a tarot spread of dreams
left face-down.

And love?
Love is the unasked-for
second spoon of honey,
the bruise behind joy’s knee,
the way dawn’s ribs part
for the day’s first arrow—
drawn from a quiver
carved from yesterday’s ache.

And Death?
That pen-pal in black gloves
who sends poems
on paper that smells
like old coins and myrrh.
You file them as bookmarks
in your book of undone things.

They burn so well.
Smell that?
Bergamot and brimstone—
the cologne of a god
who just realised
you’ve been folding
his ultimatums
into origami crows
and setting them loose.

Dawn strikes a match
with her molar—
watches the horizon crackle
like beeswax catching prophecy.
The day was always a wick
waiting for a tongue’s
blue-flame psalm.

Every dawn is a dare.
Every breath, a blood-oath.

Mornings now—
a conspiracy of light
licking honey from your lashes.
We should be impossible.

And yet—
here’s your hand
still clutching gravity,
and here’s my mouth
rewriting the horizon
with salt.
We are runway stars,
just landed.