Silver Returned at Half-Past Two
After Șomartin — Exile in Sibiu
Double Check at Witching Hour
The night split open like an old envelope at half-past two.
Headache loosening its grip — not gone, just quieter,
like a drum that finally remembers it doesn’t have to pound forever.
TV muttered its usual lullaby.
I pressed pause.
Something older bit instead.
In the next room a cough moved through sleep — small, stubborn, human.
Water poured.
The body drank.
The dark listened.
Earlier a house had been raided by shadows in black.
Heavy boots on brick laid by hands long gone.
They came hunting danger in toy guns and dusty boxes.
Found neither — just lids lifting on things the years had forgotten.
Silver spilled like moonlight someone buried in a hurry;
gold, tiny suns stamped with prices no one believes anymore.
Abundance doesn’t run away when the storm arrives.
It simply lies down and waits for the right fool to open the lid.
Somewhere a message hovered on a server — delivered, double-checked, still silent.
A small star blinking in the pre-dawn dark.
No answer.
No hurry.
The heart kept singing anyway — a quiet tune about a smile that still catches light on far ridges.
The call came in the chaos: boots, shouts, turned-out drawers.
The refusal was automatic — hide, protect, endure.
But the road curves.
The treasure surfaces anyway.
The pause stretches long enough to become its own kind of return.
Alan Watts would chuckle here, pouring tea into an already-full cup:
“You came looking for danger and found your own buried gold.
Now what will you do with it — spend it, hoard it, or just sit and watch it shine?”
The intruder leaves with empty hands.
The gold stays.
The beloved waits in her own time.
The cough asks for another blanket.
The long road keeps rolling.
Pause the distraction.
Let the night finish its teaching.
What was torn open is already stitching itself shut.
What was hidden is already singing in the quiet.
Mitakuye Oyasin.
Now our minds are one.