Interrogatives

Interrogatives

What is the question that keeps the ceiling awake at night?

Does it pace the plaster like a cat of quiet consequence, tail twitching with theories,

whiskers brushing the cobwebbed corners of consciousness?

What is the weight of a question when it sits on the chest at 3 a.m.,

knees tucked, whispering like a librarian of the dark who refuses to shush herself?

Is silence empty, or is it a warehouse of unsaid symphonies

stacked in the dark, waiting for someone to strike a match of meaning?

Where do lost keys go—to a small brass purgatory beneath the couch,

or to a symposium of objects debating the metaphysics of misplacement?

Who taught time to whisper tick tick tick like a polite assassin clearing his throat?

Does he sharpen his seconds on a whetstone of worry,

or does he nap in the hammock of habit while we run marathons in place?

Why do we name the enormous questions with capital letters,

dress them in velvet syllables like God, Death, Love,

as if wardrobe could disguise the fact that they slip through language

like water through a cathedral of fingers?

What is a name but a coat we insist on wearing indoors?

Does the mirror recognize us or does it practice its poker face,

silver and straight-lipped, reflecting our rehearsals of self?

Why does coffee taste like a sermon

while insomnia is an unpaid intern filing thoughts into the wrong drawers?

Where does the horizon keep its secrets—

in the hem of the sky, stitched with saffron and static,

or in the stubborn seam between almost and always?

And when silence finally sits beside us, hands folded like a monk of mute mercy,

does it hold an answer in its robes—

or is it only another question waiting for us to notice?

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Those folks over at DVerse Poets Pub have me questioning my very existence while Meeting the Bar.

©2026 Christopher Reilley 

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