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The Listening Light
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DROPCAP{{I}} stepped into the old stone chapel,
its door half-swallowed by
ivy,
its windows dusted in the hush of years.
A single beam of
afternoon
cut through the dusk like a blessing.
Dust floated like
memory,
and the stones exhaled
a silence older than
prayer.
I thought I was alone
until I saw the girl —
no older than
longing,
fingers gliding over glass bowls
as if to summon a
bird
without frightening it.
Then, from somewhere unseen,
the organ began to breathe —
soft chords
rising
like roots beneath her sound,
a second soul
woven through
the first.
She did not look up.
But the music they drew
turned the air to
light,
and the dust began to dance —
each mote a tiny spark
in the
hush between notes.
And something in me opened —
as if the silence
remembered my name.
And there,
between the echo and the breath,
the light listened.
And
let me listen too.
—William Zeitler
2025 July 15
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