Watching Over

A lone bird pauses above the rooftops, keeping watch from an unlikely perch. A small, quiet moment hidden in the everyday.

A town that’s just beginning to wake, though you’d never know it from the stillness. The chimneys haven’t started breathing yet, the windows are closed, and the sky hasn’t decided what kind of day it wants to be. Everything is paused in that in-between moment. And there’s this one bird; already awake, already watching.

Not lonely, exactly. More like a quiet witness. It’s seen this same street a hundred times: the routines, the comings and goings, the small lives unfolding beneath it. It knows who leaves early, who lingers, who forgets to look up.

But right now, there’s no movement. Just the hum of a world about to begin. So it waits.

There’s a feeling that something is about to shift; a door opening, a light flicking on, a first step onto the pavement. And when it does, the spell will break, the moment will dissolve into ordinary time again.

But this, this stillness, this soft grey hush; that’s the part that slips past most people.