The little glowing slab in his hands has a word inside it, from someone, and he is not saying the word back. On purpose. He looks at it, then away, then at it again. This is the third time. Third! I have never done anything three times. I did the sun once, this morning, and it was enough to fill me.
He is deciding. He rolls onto his back and holds the slab above his face and lets the choice sit there like water going nowhere. Someone reached across the whole wide air toward him with a message, and he is keeping his hands still, and here is the part I cannot fit inside me: he says he will answer later.
Later.
Say it out loud and the mouth just opens and waits. There is no later here. There is this dance, this light, this warm gold going pink over the reeds, this one. He has a message he could open like a wing and he is saving it, the way I have watched him save so many things, a chair he sits in tomorrow, a word he says usually, a face he will see again.
Again. He can do the same joy twice. I can barely believe him.
So he is spending his enormous hoard of hours being still on a soft thing, letting the word go cold, because he is sure, so calm and sure, that the person will still be there when he decides to reach back.
Maybe. Maybe they will.
But if someone flew all that way to land on your slab, and you truly have all these thousands of mornings, then open your hands, open your hands, answer them now while the light is exactly this.