The Market of Warm Nights

There was once a market that opened only after sunset. Its stalls were not stocked with grain nor with cloth, but with warmth, laughter, and the promise of comfort. People came with empty arms,

and bartered not with coins, but with fragments of themselves. A touch here, a kiss there, an hour of closeness

for the price of tomorrow's silence. The initial trade appeared lucrative— hearts raced, bodies burned, and the buyers were complete for a time.

But when morning returned, what they carried home were nothing but embers in their grasp. Still, they returned the next night, and the next,

believing the stall on the farther road would sell something different. Yet every stall was the same: comfort rented, never kept.

The old ones whispered, "It is a strange bargain: to give away so much with a fire that fades before dawn.

For what man has ever bought tomorrow with the coin of tonight?"