Threshold Light

Morning arrives through cracks in the curtain, teaching the dust to remember its body. I watch the familiar grow strange— the coffee cup, the creased pillow, all of it strange.

There is a door between yesterday and now and I cannot find the handle. My mother's voice echoes in empty rooms, a song I almost knew, syllables dissolving like sugar in water.

The sky holds its breath. A single bird traces the edges of silence. Everything that mattered once sits quiet on the shelf, waiting to be broken or dusted off.

In the spaces between heartbeats, I remember I'm still here. Still reaching for something the light keeps taking away, still becoming.