Celestial Footsteps

Night exhales, and the stars scatter
burnished grit caught in the respiration of the void.
I step lightly, careful not to break the silence
spun so thin between the air and the infinite.

The wind moves like an old song, half-remembered,
a vapor curling from lips that once spoke combustion.
It touches my skin, vanishes,
returns as something less than touch but more than memory.

Beneath me, the earth is a quiet echo,
each footfall a ripple in the deep
a pebble skipping across the fabric of all that has ever been.
I wonder if the stars feel it,
these tremors of wandering souls tracing their path in grit.

Somewhere, beauty lingers in the spaces between
between the drawn air and mist, between step and silence,
between the iridescence of now
and the vanishing of all things into radiance.