Quote by Monika Ajay Kaul

“Orion's Question and the Breath of Frost' . . Tonight, the horizon folds into itself, an old envelope sealed with frost. The earth leans ever so slightly, tilting its tired shoulder toward the sun as if apologizing for the distance. Above, Cassiopeia sprawls, half-reclining, her jeweled wrists dripping with the cold light of stars that have died a thousand times since we first gave them names. Her gaze cuts through the dark, dismissive and haunted all at once... What does she know that I do not!? I stood beneath the canopy of brittle air, the breath of a wind too muffled to matter pressing against my ear. The quietude of the season lodged itself deep, threading through marrow and thought alike. Somewhere distant, the faint call of an owl spilled across the night, shearing the imperturbable, and I realized this lull was not still, not empty. It swelled, pressed, expanded... an ache without center, scattering itself like seeds into the pit of me. For a moment, I thought I heard it... a hum, soft and glacial, as if the world itself were breathing from a great, aching hollow. I looked up and imagined Orion not as hunter but witness, the burning points of his form arranged into questions I could never answer. When I turned back toward the house, frost had etched a secret on the windowpane, its meaning almost within reach but blurred, as though by a single trembling hand.”

Quote by Monika Ajay Kaul