Lalani Hernandez, “Abstraction“
Silence grew teeth.
Gold shimmered like a warning.
Hands, divine and deliberate, made a vessel
and filled it with everything that trembles
between wonder and ruin.
A pulse waited beneath the lid.
The world leaned close.
Then,
a crack of light,
a rush of wings,
a thousand hungers spilling out
like stars learning how to fall.
The air broke open.
The sky forgot its mercy.
When the lid slammed shut,
what stayed was smaller than breath,
a sound caught between,
a whisper too soft to name.
It lingered in the dark,
folded in the quiet,
learning patience
as the centuries passed it by.
Still, it hums.
Not forgiveness,
not promise
just the fragile echo
of what refused to leave.
And if you listen closely,
in the stillness after ruin,
you might hear it
the smallest thing
that survived
the breaking.
Hope.
Small.
Unruly.
Unasked for.
A glow that hurts to touch
because it survived the fall
and refuses to disappear.
Even now,
the ember trembles.
Asking if hope was given
to heal,
or simply to keep us waiting
for a kindness
that was never coming.