I hold on to a quiet faith, waiting for something I cannot name—through countless nights, and just as many days. Beneath the sun, or wandering inside a labyrinth.

There were countless days and nights in the past when I lost both faith and the ability to hope. The world had hardened into stillness, while space—and I—were left hollow. I have lost my heartbeat and my pulse, beneath bed curtains and on deserted islands, aboard ships and adrift at sea.

He and she and she and he reached out their hands to me. Inside the black hole, I saw a gleaming ring and a beating heart. In the marsh gas, I caught the scent of warm food and blooming flowers. The night had been torn open, and behind it lay the future, along with the true past.

I wept inside a sealed room, and somewhere in my tears I found myself again. I remembered the headlights I watched from a high school bus. Back then, my heart felt as though it were suspended by a single thread, swaying gently, drifting back and forth. I saw the fine needles hidden within clusters of light, the dense ochre stones concealed inside their brilliance. I heard the measured breathing that rose from the rows of orderly seats.

Perhaps at the bottom of the deepest well there is the softest cushion. Perhaps when I finally fall, I will land not on stone, but in a bed—a vast white bed—traveling through the sky, or down a road, or through the fragrance of a dream.