Simon Gibbs

I never asked his name. I can still see the hard light around him – white, softly shared. He didn't call out; he didn't wave. Just sat, still as the land itself. A small nod. Not the kind that reaches out, but the kind that quietly makes room. I had been walking alone for days, heading south through the highlands east of the Jordan Valley, following a track that was more memory than road. By the third day, I'd stopped counting distance; the trail had faded into loose earth.