# The Bell-ringer The bell hangs in the tower, heavy with its own silence, waiting for the rope. I climb the wooden stairs, my hand finds the worn cord— how many palms before mine? The bell speaks in bronze, a voice that travels farther than any prayer could reach. I pull. The sound splits the air, ripples across the town, finds the sleeping and the grieving, the lover, the thief, the child still learning that time is measured in rings. Each stroke echoes back— the tower holds it, throws it down again. I am only the instrument's servant, my arm merely the bridge between silence and its breaking. Yet in that moment, as the clapper swings toward metal, I am the one who summons. The rope burns my palms. I do not let go. The bell continues. It will outlast me, this bronze throat, this patient hunger for movement, and another will come to pull what I have pulled, to make the waiting speak.