Her father rings every Saturday about a chicken too big for one, and has never once asked her to come. This Sunday his voice goes up from the garden and stays up, and her chair is on its back before she

Somewhere on a platform right now, a hand is still up, waving at a curve, still refusing to admit that the goodbye is already over.

We grow the armor so slowly we don't feel it settling against our skin. But a flower's weight is heavier than a blade, because we never trained to hold it.

The train is already gone, but her hand keeps waving — as if lowering it too soon would make the leaving real. On a crowded platform, a woman discovers how long the body can hold on after the mind already

No one warns you that effort can become a hiding place — that discipline is sometimes just a rhythm your body trusts more than questions.

The key still hangs on her ring, though it hasn't opened a door in eleven years — kept less out of habit than as proof of a year she never once described to the family who thinks she's always been fine

There is a loneliness in being almost understood — in standing close enough to reach for the right words and still missing. Some people can only ever meet you at the river's edge. And maybe the almost

There is a strange, unnamable quiet that settles into the room when a long chapter of waiting suddenly reaches its end.

We call it insomnia, but sometimes the mind simply refuses to hand back the only piece of time that belongs to no one else.