What if the silence is only waiting,
and heaven stands just beyond the veil,
a door left open
in the dark?

Pascal whispers:
you must choose your way
before you can know the road.

So I place my small life
upon the possibility of dawn,
as a pilgrim
who has heard a distant bell.

For what is faith
if not the heart leaning
toward what the eyes cannot yet see?

Still, I tremble at the bargain.
Can eternity be measured
against the brief weight of breath?

Can the soul be persuaded
by arithmetic?

Perhaps the wager begin
where arithmetic ends:
in the quiet decision
to live as though love matters,
to forgive as though mercy
were more real than vengeance,
to kneel beneath the stars
and call the darkness
not empty,
but listening.

And if there is no God,
let this life still have been
a life enlarged by hope,
a candle carried
through the winter.

But if there is,
then every candle,
every kindness,
every trembling yes
was not lost.

It was the first small light
of coming home.