The Debt That Needed No Hour to Be True

The clerk sealed the docket and wrote no hour down — only before the bell, as though the bell were a door, and not a wall.

A currier dressed hide for Guild Row before the frost came looking for it, and is owed one mark three for a truth the city will not clock — before the bell.

I have kept a vat so dark it would not tell its own hour either; blue is blue the moment it is blue, long before any lamp swears to it.

A boy from the chandler’s stall asked no blessing for his oil tonight — only a flame passed hand to hand, already finished, already true, before the bell.

What is correct does not require a witness holding a clock; my cloth went true at the third steeping, unweighed, unwatched, before the bell.

Three dark days, and no scale in the Bazaar may speak a price aloud — so what was owed since Dryheat simply goes on being owed, patient, before the bell.

I have spent a whole autumn begging to be seen at the one precise hour, as though a love, like a coin, were only real if it arrived before the bell.

Zara, let the debt stand entered with no hour, and call it mercy, not failure — some truths are finished in the dark, and need no bell at all to ring them true.