April 21st is not before.
It is not after.
It is the day that stands sideways
to the rest of the month,
a hinge with no door,
a moment that refuses
to belong to time at all.
It hovers.
It waits.
It breathes in a rhythm
that does not match the world’s pulse.
Around the corner,
not far,
not near,
just there,
the apocalypse turns slowly,
as if checking its pockets
for forgotten instructions.
It does not rush.
It does not roar.
It simply pivots,
a quiet inevitability
wearing the shape of a shadow
that has learned to walk upright.
And yet,
nobody hears it.
Nobody notices.
Nobody lifts their head
from the soft distractions
that keep the world spinning
in its fragile orbit.
Because the wind,
the wondrous wind,
is too busy reciting
its poems of salt.
It whispers them
into the cracks of the walls,
into the ears of the inattentive,
into the folds of coats
hung by the door.
Poems of salt:
sharp, crystalline,
stinging,
preserving,
remembering.
The wind chants them wildly,
a litany of oceans
that once believed in us,
a hymn for the things
we forgot to honor.
But no one listens.
No one hears
the wild recitation,
the salted verses,
the warning disguised
as beauty.
April 21st stands still,
caught between the turning corner
and the singing wind,
a day that knows
what the others refuse to admit:
that endings rarely shout.
They whisper.
They brush past.
They arrive in silence
while the wind
recites its poems
to no one at all.
