The Emberheart

It's 1:47 and you're watching the ceiling, not from dread, just because your mind caught fire over something small. A man at the next table yesterday tucked a strand of hair behind a woman's ear while she stared at her phone, and she never noticed. You get up, open the laptop, and half an hour later there are 2,400 words about a love that's seen but not noticed. Then you close the file without saving, because it was never for anyone to read. It was a fire you lit to watch alone. You don't burn for the future the way some people do. You burn for the heat of this one thing in front of you, and once it's burned through you let it go cold. A cloud-veiled moon still burns, just behind the cloud, where no one's keeping watch. Antares is the red heart of Scorpius, one star burning dark and alone, never measuring itself against the light beside it. Some of those files are worth showing. You don't have to. But they are.