The Threshold of Dust

The sun slants through the unwashed pane, a slow gold silt settling on the floorboards. It maps the history of the house in motes, ghostly orbits dancing in a column of heat.

Outside, the oak’s shadow stretches thin, fingers of indigo reaching for the baseboard. The clock's tick is a dry pulse, measuring the evaporation of the afternoon.

Silence here has a weight, a texture, like the velvet pile of a moth’s wing. It gathers in the corners where the wallpaper curls back from the lathe, tired of holding on.

We are only visitors to this stillness, passing through the amber of a dying day. Before the blue hour bleeds everything flat, and the stars begin their cold, distant count.