Three in the morning. That tender, middle hour when yesterday has slipped through your fingers and tomorrow is still stretching somewhere just beyond the horizon. I’m perched by the window like some half-awake lighthouse keeper, sipping on silence, letting the stillness settle into my bones.
Outside, the wind is wide awake. Not angry, not restless—just playful, like a child who refuses to go to bed. It scoops up loose paper and sends it sailing down the road, with every leaf or every tree dancing in the moonlit hour. No music, no fanfare—just the joy of moment. And there’s something honest in that.
The dark tonight isn’t heavy. It’s soft, inviting—the kind of velvet shade you could wrap around your shoulders. Porch lights spill their little halos into empty yards, and the streetlamp down the way throws lazy shadows that stretch like old stories waiting for someone to remember them.
And when you sit long enough, let your eyes unfocus just a bit, the night starts to show you things it doesn’t show everyone—half-shapes, echoes of memories, scenes stitched from yearning. The mind likes to paint its own pictures at this hour. But even in all those fuzzy silhouettes, I don’t see a face. I don’t see a moment. I see the feeling of you—the ache of what could have been, should have been, might still be if the stars take pity. A presence made of absence. A song I know by heart but haven’t heard in years.
Outside, the air has a polite chill to it. Just enough to remind me that I’m still here, that I haven’t drifted into those shapes in the night. The furnace whispers from across the room, pushing out warmth that reaches me like an old friend trying to speak without words. The Cold and the heat wrapped together—life’s way of saying balance is never simple, but always worth reaching for.
The clock ticks. Faithful. Steady. But time… time isn’t going anywhere. Not right now. It’s leaning on the wall, arms crossed, waiting for me to stop pretending I can outrun whatever it is that keeps my heart racing and my thoughts pacing circles around the same quiet question:
Where are you?
So I’ll sit here a little longer, watching the wind spin its tiny miracles, listening to the clock make its gentle little promises, and wondering—wherever you are, do you feel this same pull in the dark?
Sleep, that old friend, tends to arrive when you forget to look for her. But tonight she’s off wandering, chasing other people’s dreams. I’ll leave the door cracked for her, whenever she decides to come home.
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A Kings 
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