The In Between

There is a certain time of day I call the in-between.

The sun is still there, and yet it has already begun to descend.

I love this hour because nothing feels final.

Not day. Not evening.

The light shifts. The day exhales.

For a moment, I am not reaching for what comes next.

It feels like crossing time zones midair, where two realities exist at once.

I have lived here before.

Between diagnosis and acceptance. Between goodbye and silence. Between the woman I was and the one I had to become.

This hour knows that terrain.

It does not rush the sun.

It does not cling to it either.

Both things are true.

The sky changing.

The light still there.

Each evening

a doorway appears

in plain sight.

And I step through

without knowing

who I will be

when the light shifts again.

BIO Carol Ornstein is a lover of life and seeks to see the unseen through words, photos, and nature. She can be found helping the underdog and writing haiku poetry about everything and nothing.