Ode to Hope at Dawn Blue eyes, worn thin by the weight of the night, hold steady on a line where the world splits in two, east and west, a new day a blasted night, what comes next, and what will never leave. To my side, the west smolders. Brown earth, scorched and torn, still whispering the violence it just endured. Smoke crawls upward in slow surrender, curling into the sky like ghosts that refuse to be buried. The red of the town lingers low, glowing in its destruction, a mournful beacon in...