The shortest day in Palestine has no festival, no ceremony, just the limestone walls holding yesterday's warmth, cold seeping up thru packed earth floor.

Maryam grinds barley between flat basalt stones, scrape & crunch rhythmic as breathing, flour dust whitening her careful knuckles.

Yeshu splits kindling w/ calloused palms, splinters embedding in thumb-web, wood chips catching in his dark beard, clean smell of fresh-cut cedar.

Olive oil lamp w/ one wick smoking, small flame making shadows larger, acrid smell of burning wick-fibre.

Outside, Roman roads runs straight toward somewhere else. Inside, lentil steam rises, mingles, smoke from the clay oven, condensation on the water jar's cool clay.

His father's tools hang on pegs— adze, saw, bow drill—waiting for work, for morning, for ordinary time.

She tucks her headscarf tighter, & He drinks water from the common cup.

The sun sets early over Galilean hills. Tomorrow it will set later, oh, by a breath, by a moment.

Neither of them will know this.