The shadows come crawling,
black-lipped and brine-soaked,
like grief rolling in from the sea –
our backs turned to the salt, the ache,
the waterfront shutting down in the rearview.

Shadows reclaim the harbor.
The day recedes – forgets itself –
like the mind of an old man.
Behind us, the sea breaks against stone.

We are not hurried.
Time, like a shawl, wraps loosely
around our shoulders. We carry it with us,
not as burden, but as blessing.

Ten blocks to the apartment.
A kingdom, roomed with light and silence.
We are its keepers – not of walls, but of thresholds,
of the spaces between your step and mine,
where love waits and waits and does not vanish.

Time is a velvet rope, slack in our hands.
We walk it like tightrope artists
who know the fall is inevitable but still perform.