Loading
The Interest on a Death Not Yet Due
The Interest on a Death Not Yet Due Stephen L. Harrison
Shadows dance. That is all. No fruit to fall—no root to claim. So I will wait. Each new face: a card turned twice— once for the asker, once for the ask. Whisper becomes song becomes the silence between syllables, where stories go to owe. From the deep, we all arise— but the deep is not a mother. It is a lender. Thought, its principal. Breath, its term. The sky, a receipt we cannot read. Life, then dust, then salty eyes— the interest compounded in every glance that does not look away. Now, we wait. Not for an answer— but for the question to forget itself. And watch it all unfold— except the first breath, which was never given. Only lent forward, from a story that began after we stopped listening. — (What we owe, we already are. The first breath was never lent— it was the interest on a death not yet due.)
The Interest on a Death Not Yet Due Stephen L. Harrison
Shadows dance. That is all. No fruit to fall—no root to claim. So I will wait. Each new face: a card turned twice— once for the asker, once for the ask. Whisper becomes song becomes the silence between syllables, where stories go to owe. From the deep, we all arise— but the deep is not a mother. It is a lender. Thought, its principal. Breath, its term. The sky, a receipt we cannot read. Life, then dust, then salty eyes— the interest compounded in every glance that does not look away. Now, we wait. Not for an answer— but for the question to forget itself. And watch it all unfold— except the first breath, which was never given. Only lent forward, from a story that began after we stopped listening. — (What we owe, we already are. The first breath was never lent— it was the interest on a death not yet due.)