She had not meant to
leave the window open
that night, but her
hands had stopped
listening hours ago. The
room filled slowly with a
kind of cold she could
not name—thin, polite,
the kind that does not
interrupt a thought but
settles beside it. She
watched the curtain move
and thought, this is
what it feels like to be
unstuck from a Tuesday.
Nowhere urgent. Nothing
undone. Just air moving
through the place she had
been too tired to seal
against. By morning the
light arrived the way it
always does for people
who do not ask for it:
patient, ordinary, a
little too bright. She
closed the window then.
Not because the cold had
left, but because the
room had remembered how
to hold warmth again.