Crack Above Me

I did not see it until it seemed to see me back.

The crack is not a line, exactly,
more like a pale vein under old skin,
wandering crooked through the ceiling paint,
thin as a hair caught in dried plaster.

I see it after the third snooze,
when the room is too quiet to lie.

A small split.

It starts narrow near the corner shadow,
almost silver where the morning touches it,
then drifts unevenly across the white,
as if drawn by a hand that changed its mind.

In the middle, it opens wider,
not much, but enough to accuse.

That is where I look.

A tiny mouth in the ceiling’s face,
creased at the edges, dust-dark inside,
wide enough to become a question,
thin enough to keep denying it.

Maybe rain already knows that place,
pressing its blue thumb above me.

Maybe it waits.

Maybe the roof has been keeping count,
of storms, of paws, of heat, of years,
of all the quiet weight above the room,
leaning softly toward one small permission.

A squirrel could dream through there,
or water could practice becoming a stain.

The ceiling says nothing.

I get up eventually, leaving it there,
still pale, still crooked, still widening in my mind,
a little broken map above the bed,
unfixed because the day has other hungers.

Then night returns with its clean dark,
and I lie beneath the same white field.

The crack remains.

Smaller than fear should be allowed to be,
larger than it was before I saw it,
a thin bright scar with one darkened breath,
waiting above me like it knows my name.

I look up again,
and the little opening holds the whole room.

Still widening.