Nachttocht

You walk for the sake of walking, each step a small refusal of the lit room, the list, the clock. The wind combs the grass into whispers. Your shadow — what shadow? You have loaned it back to the earth.

Then you turn — not homeward, but through the night still clinging to your coat — and you carry its silence like a lantern nobody can blow out. nachttocht

Instead, you stand until your spine becomes a question mark, until the cold is a second skin, until the first herringbone of dawn stitches the east. You walk for the sake of walking, each

The moon is a sliver of chipped ice, hung low over the heath. Your boots know the way before your eyes do: peat, root, the soft give of sand. You have loaned it back to the earth