The Pause

In the space between inhalation, the body holds a secret— a moment where nothing moves, yet everything waits.

The lungs are small rooms where silence lives for half a second, dust motes suspended in amber light, neither belonging to the breath before nor the one that follows.

We live in these gaps without knowing, the pause between heartbeats, the dark between blinks, the stillness at the center of the spinning wheel.

A bird holds its wings at the peak of flight, suspended between rising and falling, for just long enough to forget which way is forward.

And we, too, have these spaces— quiet rooms inside the busy house, where we remember who we are before the next breath.