Underlying Conditions

We are all dependents. The child takes the allowance like weather, like air— not knowing it was ever a decision, not asking what it costs to be given freely.

The star is there even in daylight, waiting for the sky to admit it— not summoned, not earned, just quietly true until the dark lets it be seen.

And the heart, too, keeps time as if by nature, as if it owed no one an explanation— until the day it stops, and everyone learns what it had been leaning on all along.