Atlas of Unlit Rooms

I walk the apartment the way cartographers pace a coast, hand on the wall, counting the quiet into bays and inlets— lamp off, every doorway a mouth of dark water.

The kitchen holds a faint salt of metal and basil, a bowl is a moon set down to rest, and the refrigerator hums like a neighbor practicing one note until the building becomes a single instrument.

In the hallway, coats hang like patient animals, still, listening for their names, their sleeves hollowed by the shape of wind. I pass them and the air shifts to cloth and rain.

The bedroom is a harbor where I anchor the day; streetlight seeps in, a slow tide of amber, and the ceiling gathers it in a shallow lake. I float there, small and stitched to the dark, learning the map by touch, by breath.