My Silent Prayer

I am getting older— I hear the clock gnawing at my dreams, counting me down in merciless breaths. I feel myself thinning, as though hope, too, has an expiration date no one warned me about. Where is my love? Where is my future? Where is the small life— we were meant to hold between us? I already have children, proof that love once found me, and still, my body remembers what it was made to hope for, even as time presses closer. I do not ask loudly. I do not demand. I only carry this want like a candle cupped in shaking hands, afraid the dark will notice. This is my silent prayer: not to be spared longing— only to be answered before it is too late.