At midnight, the world holds its breath.
The town square hums, a restless hive.
Mothers clutch children like shields of habit.
Elders lean heavy on the weight of stories.
At the center—alive, writhing, inexplicable.
The brain pulses in shades of sorrow.
Veins like rivers mapped out its surface.
Our shadows bend, craning toward the glow.
“Ask it,” someone whispers, voice needle-thin.
But questions hang fragile as spider silk.
What would it know of our brittle hearts,
our chipped dishes, our unpaid electric bills?
The drunkards kneel more honest than priests.
Farmhands chew their lips, hands fidget cold.
It glows harder, something alive inside of it,
as if language itself was meant to hurt.
A child steps forward, trembling, yet unafraid.
\"Do you know why we are lonely?\"
And the silence swells bigger than the moon,
bigger than the truth of the answer.