BEFORE IT BEGINS AGAIN - POETIC ESSAY

I often find myself driving just before dawn—

especially on Sundays.

Those hours feel untouched,

as if the angels are still making their rounds,

and the noise of living hasn’t remembered how to rise.

The roads are mostly empty,

save for the others like me—

those fleeing something,

those searching for something,

or those simply obeying the rhythm of breath.

There is something tender

about an unclaimed morning:

the breeze brushing the window,

the birds rehearsing their entry into light,

the mind loosening its grip

on the heaviness it held through the night.

Night has its safety.

But dawn offers a different kind of mercy—

not fearsome,

just solemn.

Like death’s gentler twin.

An exit.

A door.

A quiet way out

of all that refused to rest.