The Space Between Waking

Fog spills through the kitchen like a visitor who forgets to knock—softening the edges of chairs, of photographs, of the breakfast you didn't finish yesterday.

Outside, a bird repeats one word over and over, beautiful and manic, testing if sound alone can build a world worth living in.

I find your bookmark, three chapters in, a page marked you'll never turn. The story holds its breath like I do, patient as dust accumulating on belief.

The silence between us has grown bones. It walks through rooms on its own now, opens cupboards, breathes against the window, turns morning into a choice I didn't know I had to make.