**Five Minutes of Morning**

still half a ghost of dream and warm,

your breath on my neck, a slow metronome.

the curtains are a watercolor, pale and thin,

the world outside rubs sleep from its chin.


there’s a neighbor starting his car like he’s tuning a radio,

somewhere down the block the bus sighs hello.

the coffee maker gurgles a hymn in the kitchen,

and for five little minutes the calendar is fiction.


i trace the familiar map of your shoulder, quiet as prayer,

no alarms, no errands crowding the air.

in this small cathedral of sheets and morning light,

every wrong feels soft, every bruise is right.


the city’s a soft drum, distant and slow,

a slow crescendo that I don’t have to know.

time sits on the sill and watches us stay,

and we let it — let it pass, let it melt away.


your hand finds the outline of my hand — a practiced theft,

we speak in rustles, in coughs, in the breaths we left.

the day sharpens its teeth beyond our glass,

but in here, we’re slow, like seconds that want to last.


i could write a sermon on the way the light leans,

on how the silence hums between the seams.

but sermons sound better when they’re small and true:

i’m home when i’m not trying to be anything but next to you.


for five minutes the future’s a distant shore,

the past is a sweater folded on the floor.

the clock scratches out a patient little song,

and neither of us feel like we’re late for long.


so stay, while the world practices waking up loud,

let the morning pretend to be just a cloud.

we’ll build a daytime from this quiet seam,

but first, let’s stay in the middle of the dream.