It's Still Life

Equinox

She was a daughter of light, yes — but even as a child, she watched the shadows move first. They gathered beneath her bed like cats. Flicked the candles when no wind stirred. Knew her name before she did.

She tried to stay loyal to the sun. Woke early. A sunrise child. Let its warmth kiss her spine.

But one day, it blistered her skin. Blinding. Merciless. The light had no mercy left for her. So she turned inward — into cellars, into roots, into silence — and the shadows found her again.

“We do not ask for worship,” they said. “Only attention.”

She listened.

Now she walks the threshold between light and dark. Her smile is dusk. Her voice is weather.
“Eventually,” she said, “I would have learnt to love black days like bright ones.”

And eventually, she had.