The Boy Who Closed the Heavens

There was once a boy
who drowned himself in the silence,
in the absence of a love he had lost.

He sought answers from the stars,
the cards, and the omens of dreams
he never understood.

But time healed all wounds
like it always does and left the boy
stronger that he ever thought he was.

The boy finally became
a quiet country unto himself.

His mornings belonged
to books left half-read,
to forgotten songs rediscovered,
to the patient company
of ordinary days.

The silence, once unbearable,
had grown kind enough
to call itself home.

He no longer climbed
the observatory at dusk.

The stars had spent
too many nights
pretending to know
what tomorrow meant.

So he let the constellations
keep their riddles.

He stopped asking the heavens
to explain the people
who had already left.

Nor did he reach
for the weathered deck.

The cards remained face down,
their mouths closed.

He had grown weary of prophecies
that always demanded
another wound
before they called it wisdom.

Then, a familiar message arrived—
small enough to fit inside his hand,
yet heavy enough  to shake
the walls of everything he had rebuilt.

That night, the dreams returned.
Not as nightmares, but as omens.

A voice he had forgotten.
Footsteps in familiar halls.
A life he had buried, walking once more
through the garden of his sleep.

Morning came, and with it
the unbearable knowledge
that peace can be disturbed
without ever being broken.

His gaze drifted,
if only for a heartbeat,
toward the stars.
His fingers remembered
the shape of the waiting cards.

Curiosity whispered like an old religion.
But the boy closed the window
before the night could speak.

Some heavens deserve their silence.
Some cards are kinder unturned.

He would not mistake restlessness
for destiny, nor longing
for a road worth walking twice.

He had found a life
that finally belonged to him.

And though memory still knocked,
it would not be invited in.