There’s a particular honesty to lamplight. It makes you tell the truth without making a speech about it. This is a small song-poem called “Thaw”. One take, one room, no costume. If it meets you where you are, I’m glad.
Thaw
K. Jacob Wilson
Some nights the cold feels personal,
as if it learned your name and came back for it.
Let it be cold. Tell the truth.
Evil looks larger than good when it shouts.
Good keeps smaller hours,
a pilot light, quiet, stubborn, real.
The wind turns, eventually. It always has.
Not because we deserve it,
only because seasons just do what they do.
I have watched a room keep the worst hour.
That hallway light, leaking under the door.
A cup of ice sweating itself empty.
The chair that does not move.
Your socks grab the sheets like a child hiding from the monsters under the bed.
Machines practicing their steady hymn.
Outside, the sky keeps going, unmoved,
as if it cannot imagine our small rooms.
Put on your coat.
Keep listening. Your own heart beats back.
Look up at the stars, anyway.
