There's a jar that sits upon a table,

surrounded by scraps of parchment

and bundles of herbs, fragrance spiking

the air with the scent of the outdoors;

It sits empty, the lid screwed on tightly,

no air flow, stopped at the lips of silent

glass, hoping for gentle hands to come

and undo the lid, let in the light, the smells,

and the warmth that is not the barren

forest landscape outside the window,

not the eerie quiet of the windless grass,

the whispers of the world lost to the sky,

gone from the echoes of the caverns

of my mind; the small cabin that sits

in the clearing in a wood of sound death,

nothing vibrates the air, countless particles

suspended by invisible strings, crisscrossing

my line of sight; I sigh and I hear nothing,

my voice is swallowed by the sky and

the murmurs of the beat within my chest

are whisked down the wishing well, hoping

for something that would never arrive;

It signals the coming of the tendrils

of starlight, creeping from the heavens

to the mortal earth, breaking rock and soil

to upturn the crystallized heart, the core

of the universe, sleeping beneath my feet.