Doubt

It doesn’t arrive with any weight—

no voice, no argument—

just later light on the hills,

and something missing from it.

You notice it first

in the way things stop answering.

Not at once.

Just less than before.

What you called belief

goes slack a little,

like a line that’s held too long

and now won’t quite tighten.

Nothing dramatic happens.

No doors close.

Only the sense

that they were never doors.

You stand there a while,

as people do,

waiting for something to settle

into a shape you can use.

It doesn’t.

There are still the usual things—

tea, the paper,

the slow rearrangement of hours

into something like a day.

You go on with them.

There seems no reason not to.

If this is doubt,

it isn’t sharp enough to fight,

or clear enough to name.

Only this:

a quiet reduction,

as if the world had stepped back

half a pace

and left you

not abandoned exactly,

but without the old instructions

for what to expect.