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poem submitted to "This or That Vol. 39" poetry contest, Edward Ibeh, sponsor 6/12/2026
She turns the radio dial with tired hands, chasing a voice through the crackling dark. Every station fractures into static, a snowstorm of sound that won’t let her in. She leans closer, as if breath alone could coax meaning from the broken hum. The world feels distant, unreachable~ just her and the staticky hiss of unfinished thoughts. Then softly~ a thread of music slips through the noise, thin as a pulse returning after silence, a single note glowing like a lantern held out by someone who somehow knows her name. She stills herself, listening, the melody rising, warm and unafraid. something in her chest loosens~ a knot she’d carried so long she’d forgotten it was there. The song widens, filling the room with a light she can’t see but feels, unmistakably, like hands lifting the weight she never spoke of. She closes her eyes. The static falls away. The music moves through her like a truth she’d been waiting to remember~ a quiet, holy clarity that finds her exactly where she is and asks nothing except that she let it stay.
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