The Gilded Threshold

Light pools like honey on the worn wood floor, each grain a river running toward evening. Outside, the world rehearses its descent— trees darken from green to suggestion, the sky a canvas half-painted, half-dreaming.

I stand in this pause between what was and what arrives quietly, without announcement. The dust I cannot see moves through this gold, each particle a small burning, a brief flare before the dimming.

Nothing asks me to decide. The light will leave; the dark will come— a rhythm older than words for it. I only watch the walls remember color, remember themselves as luminous, before they learn the language of shadow.