The Tether

Morning swells through the window— amber light pooling on rumpled sheets, a warmth that tastes of honey and forgetting.

Your voice echoes still, though you left in the dark hours when dreams wear thin. I reach for the shape of it, the echo, but my hand passes through air.

The world reassembles itself: coffee hums in the kitchen, birds name the day in short, insistent calls. I am tethered back, thread by thread, to this solid, breathing thing called waking.

Yet something lingers— the sweetness of that other country, where logic bends like light through water and loss tastes almost like love.