The Edge of Turning

Rust-colored leaves spiral down in no hurry, landing on concrete still warm from afternoon. The light has a quality now—honeyed, slanting— that makes ordinary things look like they're being remembered.

A woman stands in her kitchen doorway, watching the street empty of its afternoon noise. The birds have already shifted their conversation to something softer, more urgent.

There's a word for this hour, this precise slant of shadows, but it lives in another language, in the mouth of someone who noticed exactly when the world turned from what it was into what it's becoming.

She doesn't move. The tea cools in her hand. Outside, the maples surrender their branches to the coming darkness, and for one moment nothing is changing—everything is.