The Threshold

Morning arrives in fragments, light learning the edges of furniture, your hand still warm where sleep released it.

In this quiet, the world reassembles— coffee steam rises like prayers that no one is listening to, the refrigerator's hum a heartbeat steady and indifferent.

You remember a street you've never walked, a voice calling a name that isn't yours, the particular weight of rain on shoulders you no longer have.

And then it's gone, what you were holding. You reach for it. Your fingers close on air, on the ordinary light of Tuesday, on the sound of your own breathing— the only ghost that kept its promise.