11:58 p.m.

The screen flickers. Grainy resolution, pixels struggling to hold form in the amber glow. A park bench sits crooked in the frame, its iron legs half-sunken into damp soil. Shadows stretch long and jagged, spilling into the empty spaces between paths.

It’s almost beautiful. Almost.

He leans closer, the webcam feed bathing his face in cold blue light. His breath fogs the air in front of him, short and shallow, and the desk beneath his elbows creaks with his weight.

The cursor hovers.

Click.

The camera pans left, motorized and deliberate. Slow enough to tease, to make every inch of revealed darkness feel like a strip being peeled away.

He knows this spot. Walked it a hundred times, mapping the rhythms of its silence. The park lives in his head like a second home—each bench, every lamp, all the exits carved into his memory like a map of inevitabilities.

11:59 p.m.

Movement.

It’s small, insignificant, like a moth flickering in the corner of the frame, but his pulse quickens anyway. He drags the camera back, snapping it into focus.

There.

A figure.

They’re pacing beneath the lamppost, their shadow stretching ahead of them like an obedient dog. A woman, maybe mid-30s, bundled against the cold in a coat too thin for December. Her hands are stuffed into her pockets, head down, her steps uneven and restless.

He smiles.

The screen renders her in shades of gray, her features smudged and soft, but there’s something in the way she moves. Like she doesn’t belong here, her body out of sync with the park’s rhythm.

He knows the type.

They always come here for the same reason.

She stops. Looks up. Her face catches the light—brief, blurred, barely enough to form an image—but his breath hitches anyway.

Her lips move. A small puff of breath escapes, visible even in the low-quality feed, and he tilts his head, imagining the sound of her voice. Soft, maybe. A little hoarse.

12:01 a.m.

She sits.

Sinks onto the bench, her silhouette slumping forward as her elbows rest on her knees. She pulls something from her pocket—a phone, its screen glowing brighter than the surrounding lamps—and the reflection paints her face with fleeting clarity.

He leans closer. The chair beneath him squeals, a sound swallowed by the static hiss of the webcam feed.

Her eyes flick toward the camera.

He freezes.

The moment passes. She’s looking through it, not at it, her attention somewhere beyond the lens. Her fingers swipe across the phone screen, her face painted in shifting shadows.

She doesn’t know he’s there.

He exhales.

12:03 a.m.

The camera pans wider, its mechanical hum grinding against the quiet. He scans the empty paths, the motionless trees, the parked cars beyond the gates.

No one else.

The smile returns.

Click.

He locks the camera back on her. It’s a game now, the kind where the rules don’t exist. The kind where the winner gets to write the ending.

She stands again. Her body language is taut, uncertain, like she’s waiting for something that won’t come. Her phone dangles from one hand, her head swiveling as if she’s searching for a sign.

His fingers tighten on the mouse.

12:05 a.m.

The feed crackles, pixels distorting her shape, stretching her into something unnatural for the briefest moment. He slams the desk, and the screen steadies again.

She’s walking now. Back the way she came, her pace quickening, her shadow chasing her down the path.

The camera doesn’t follow her. It can’t. Its reach stops at the edge of the frame, the park gates cutting her off like a severed limb.

He stares at the empty screen.

The lamppost flickers, once, twice, and then the image stabilizes again.

He shifts back in his chair, his knuckles cracking as his hands flex and relax. His breathing is steady now, a low tide rolling in under the surface of his chest.

12:07 a.m.

He closes the tab. The screen goes black, reflecting his face in sharp angles and dull eyes.

His mind fills in the rest. The park’s rhythm, her unsteady gait, the precise distance between her last known position and where he waits.

She doesn’t know it yet, but she’s already his.

12:10 a.m.

He grabs his coat.

The knife waits on the counter by the door, gleaming faintly under the eager light. He pockets it with practiced ease, the weight of it a reassurance.

The park is only five minutes away.

Enough time to let the silence stretch.

They cracked it open with a crowbar because the lock had rusted to glue, and the hinges moaned like they remembered. The crowd pressed in —a sweating, shifting wall of small-town pride—and the mayor, wiping his brow with a pocket square, declared it historic, though no one could remember what year it’d been buried or by whom.

The lid swung back. Silence knotted itself tight, heavy, as if the air had turned thick with waiting. Someone coughed. And then it hit—a smell like burnt hair and rotten lamb and old metal, flooding out in waves, rippling nausea through the crowd. Someone gagged. A child cried. The air recoiled.

Inside, the contents glistened wet and wrong. Not artifacts. Not memories. Things that squirmed, that pulsed faintly, that shivered like they were waking up. Something with too many legs and no face scuttled over the lip and dropped to the ground with a sound like meat slapping stone.

The mayor tried to speak, but his mouth foamed instead, his words guttural and alien, a voice that wasn’t his clawing out from somewhere deeper.

And then the lid slammed itself shut.

The ground beneath it cracked open, and the world began to tilt.

She carries her anger like matches,

striking them against his words.

"Look what you made me do,"

she says to the flames.

But fire lives first in the match,

not in the surface it scrapes.

Her hands hold the burning—

her choice to strike.

Each morning, she stockpiles

her arsenal of blame:

"Your tone lit these matches.

Your silence soaked them in kerosene.

Your breathing made my hands spark."

As if emotions were kindling

someone else stacked.

In other rooms, with other people,

she holds her flames in check.

Greets them with a smile that doesn’t burn,

speaks words that don’t char the air.

Strange, how her anger knows

such selective timing.

The truth sits quiet as stone:

no one pours rage into her cup each morning.

No one winds up her voice,

a music box of harsh notes.

No one’s hands

move her lips into snarls.

She is the keeper

of her own flames,

the striker of matches,

master of embers.

But she points to others,

blaming the burns.

In mirrors throughout the house,

her reflection waits

to show her whose hands

hold the matches,

whose breath feeds the flames,

whose choice it is

to burn—or to build

something new from the ashes

of old excuses.

and then you just walked out like it meant nothing, she says, fingers tight around the coffee mug, knuckles white against the ceramic. steam rises between them. outside the kitchen window snow falls in big wet clumps that dont stick.

meant nothing? jesus mae i came back didnt i? im here now trying to explain. he runs his palm over the scratched formica tabletop, tracing old rings from hot cups, memories of other mornings, other arguments.

three weeks later. her voice drops lower. three weeks of silence.

i needed time to think.

think about what exactly? what was so complicated that you needed three weeks of complete radio silence to figure out? the mug makes a sharp sound against the table as she sets it down too hard. coffee sloshes over the rim, spreads across the formica like a stain blooming.

he watches the coffee creep toward the edge of the table. reaches for a dish towel hanging from the oven handle. she pulls it away first, wipes up the spill with short angry strokes.

i was trying to figure out if i could be what you needed. his voice softens. if i could give you the life you deserve.

dont. she crumples the wet towel in her fist. dont try to make this noble.

im not. im trying to be honest.

now? now youre trying honesty?

silence fills the kitchen. the refrigerator hums. snow builds up on the window ledge outside.

remember that summer at the lake? he says finally. that night we built a fire on the beach?

she closes her eyes. dont.

the wind kept shifting, blowing smoke in our faces. but we stayed. kept feeding it branches, kept it burning until sunrise. he leans forward, elbows on the table. thats what we have mae. its messy sometimes, gets in our eyes, makes us turn away. but underneath its still burning. always burning.

we were twenty-two. her eyes open, fix on him. and its not burning anymore cole. its burnt.

no. no, listen. his hands move through the air between them, trying to shape what he means. its like... its like this old truck engine i rebuilt last month. looked like scrap, all rusted out, seized up. but the bones were good. just needed someone willing to dig in, clean it up, replace the worn parts. now it runs better than new.

she pushes back from the table. chair legs scrape against linoleum. im not an engine cole. im not something you can fix up in your garage when you finally feel like it.

thats not what i meant.

then what did you mean? explain it to me. explain how leaving for three weeks with no word, no call, no text, was somehow about saving us? about keeping something burning?

he stares down at his hands. grease still dark under his fingernails despite scrubbing. i got scared.

of what?

of not being enough. of being exactly who you said i was - someone who breaks things he cant fix.

she stands, carries her mug to the sink. looks out at the snow. you dont break things cole. you just stop tending them. let them run down, run cold. then you convince yourself theres something noble in trying to resurrect them. she turns back to him. but some things cant be brought back. some things are just finished.

we're not finished. he pushes up from the table, takes a step toward her. mae please. i know i fucked up. know i hurt you. but dont tell me what we have is dead. dont tell me that fire went out.

it didn't go out cole. her voice is quiet now, almost gentle. you weren't there to see it happen. but it didn't just die - it burned through everything we built. burned until there was nothing left but ashes. and now youre kneeling in those ashes, trying to convince me you can still see flames.

he stops. the space between them feels vast suddenly, uncrossable. outside the snow falls harder, whites out the world beyond the window.

i love you, he says. words naked, unadorned with metaphor now.

i know. she puts her mug in the sink, runs water. but love isn't always enough. sometimes it just illuminates what's broken.

the water runs. he watches her back, the familiar curve of her spine beneath her sweater. remembers other mornings in this kitchen, her body warm against his, coffee going cold on the counter. remembers the weight of her head on his chest that night on the beach, sparks rising into darkness, their whole future spread out before them like stars.

what if... his voice catches. he starts again. what if i could prove it's not too late? what if i could show you?

she turns off the water. dries her hands on the dish towel, still damp with spilled coffee. you already have. she meets his eyes. you showed me when you walked out that door three weeks ago. showed me again every day you didn't call. and youre showing me now, with these stories about fires and engines, trying to romanticize what's already gone instead of facing what's real.

this is real. he gestures between them. us, here, trying to figure this out. that's real.

no cole. she shakes her head. this is epilogue. this is you trying to rewrite an ending that's already written. she moves past him, heads for the hallway. stops in the doorway. i loved our fire too. loved watching it burn. but i was also there to see it burn through. and i won't pretend i still see flames just because you've finally decided to come looking for them.

he stands alone in the kitchen. listens to her footsteps on the stairs. outside the snow falls, erasing tracks, covering everything in clean white silence. the refrigerator hums. somewhere under the sink a pipe drips, marking time. he looks down at his hands - mechanic's hands, used to fixing what's broken. but she's right. some things can't be brought back once they're gone. some fires leave nothing behind but ashes, no matter how hard you search for remaining sparks.

he turns off the kitchen light. walks to the front door in darkness. opens it to swirling snow and biting wind. steps out into white silence, pulling the door closed behind him. leaves no footprints that won't be covered, no trace that he was ever there at all.

I will wade into morning like a man crossing rivers in flood time and the water will take what it needs and leave the rest and I will let it. Bones know their own way home.

Dark earth calls. Must answer. Will sink hands deep into loam and clay until worms thread between my fingers like ancient prayers and roots mistake me for their own kind.

Time flows and does not flow and a man can count heartbeats or stars or grains of sand but the counting changes nothing. Still. The measuring matters.

I will build with these hands what needs building and tear down what needs tearing and the dust of it will write stories on my skin that even God must bend low to read. Some words can only be written in sweat and splinters.

Dawn comes. Goes. Comes again. The spinning world asks nothing of us but everything. Must answer anyway.

So I will gather moments like a man gathering firewood before storm season knowing some will burn quick and hot and others will smolder until the coals birth diamonds and either way the gathering matters the carrying matters the weight of it all matters.

Truth is: we are all burning. Truth is: the light we make belongs to no one.

And when the last hour comes hunting like a lean wolf through long grass I will stand upright and empty-handed having spent everything given everything poured it all out like wine like blood like star-stuff until nothing remains but the shape of my giving.

That's the wild and precious part. The spending. The emptying. The holy wastefulness of being.

She picks up on the first ring, then pretends she didn't by waiting three beats before speaking. "Hello?"

"Hey." His voice carries the smile she'd tasted forty-seven minutes ago. "I just—I wanted to check something in my calendar. For this week. If that's okay?"

"Oh! Yes, checking calendars is... that's a normal thing people do." She's pacing her kitchen, bare feet catching on the linoleum's slight tackiness. The dishes from breakfast still crowd her sink—evidence of a morning that feels like it happened in another lifetime.

"Right, exactly. Very normal." He clears his throat. "So I have this work thing Wednesday—"

"Wednesday's actually perfect because Tuesday I have my sister's—wait, no, sorry, you weren't suggesting Wednesday, were you? You were just telling me you're busy then."

"No, I mean, yes, I was saying I'm busy but also trying to, um, figure out when I'm not busy. If that makes sense." The sound of papers shuffling comes through the line. "Thursday?"

"Thursday." She tests the word, rolling it around her mouth like the memory of their kiss. "Thursday I have yoga until 7:30, but after that—"

"I could do after that. I could definitely do after that." The eagerness in his voice makes her stomach flip. "There's this place that does really good Thai food, unless you don't like Thai food, in which case there's obviously other food that exists in the world—"

"I love Thai food." She's grinning now, pressing her forehead against the cool surface of her refrigerator. "I was actually going to suggest Thai food, but I didn't want to be too... presumptuous about suggesting specific cuisines this early in our... calendar coordination."

A laugh breaks through his carefully maintained casualness. "God, this is weird, isn't it? An hour ago I didn't even know if you liked me, and now I'm checking my Google Calendar like it holds the secrets to the universe."

"It is weird," she agrees, warmth spreading through her chest. "But maybe good weird? Like, I'm standing here pretending I need to double-check if I'm free Thursday when I've already mentally canceled three different things."

"I haven't checked a single thing on my calendar this entire conversation," he confesses. "I've just been holding a random receipt and making paper-shuffling noises."

The laughter comes easy now, the awkwardness transforming into something precious—a shared secret, a private joke in the making. They're building something here, between the pretense of scheduling and the raw honesty of new attraction.

"So... Thursday at 8?" she ventures.

"Thursday at 8," he confirms, then adds quickly, "Although I could do 7:45 if your yoga ends earlier than expected. Or 8:15 if you need more time. Or really any time that works for you, I'm pretty flexible. Not yoga-flexible, obviously, but time-flexible."

"8 is perfect," she says softly, and they both hear what she really means: *You're perfect, this is perfect, the way my heart is racing right now is perfect.*

"Okay. Good. That's... that's really good." Another pause, filled with unspoken words. "I should probably let you go now, right? That's probably what a normal person would do instead of trying to find more excuses to keep talking?"

She traces a pattern on the fridge door, spelling out Thursday over and over. "Probably. Although I should mention that my calendar has some very suspicious empty spaces this evening..."

"What a coincidence," he says, relief and joy tangling in his voice. "Mine too."

ain't it something—the way we parse our lungs into polite portions, like

granma's teacups lined up all pristine & proper on Sunday?

such

tiny

sips

of

sky

the body knows better. knows how to gulp-swallow-devour the world when we let it. when we don't cage it in business-casual breaths & conference-room dreams & fluorescent-lit desires.

see: the newborn's first raw scream

the lover's ragged gasp

the runner's victorious heave

the swimmer's desperate surface-break

& here we are, making do with these careful little breaths. these timid

micro-doses of existence. like we're afraid the universe might notice us

taking more than our share.

but listen,

the stars didn't explode into being

just so we could

inhale

in

mea

sured

doses

remember: every cell in your body descends from creatures who knew how to BREATHE, really breathe, who pulled oxygen from ancient seas & figured out how to scale mountains & sprint across savannas & sing whale-songs through ocean depths.

you are their wild inheritance.

so go ahead:

breathe like you mean it.

breathe like you're stealing fire from gods.

breathe like you remember what your atoms were

before they learned to play human.

because this thing you're doing now?

this shallow-chest half-life ventilation?

it's not breathing.

it's not living.

it's just

rehearsing

for

the

stillness.

I keep waiting for noise.

My ears ring with its absence,

like phantom limb pain

for a sound that's gone.

The neighbor's wind chimes

still make me flinch.

But there's only breeze now,

no distant thunder of shells.

My tea grows cold

while I watch clouds.

They're just clouds now,

not signals or signs.

Sparrows have returned

to nest in broken eaves.

Strange how ordinary songs

fill spaces bombs left behind.

My hands remember

the weight of a rifle

but hold garden tools instead.

The dirt accepts them both.

The kids next door play war.

I want to tell them

they're doing it wrong—

too much laughing, too much joy.

But their peace is real,

not this quiet I wear

like borrowed clothes,

still stiff with tags.

At night I count heartbeats,

not casualties.

The numbers mean nothing now.

Nothing needs counting.

Sometimes I catch myself

planning escape routes

through my own garden.

Old habits die harder than people.

The silence stretches,

thick as armor.

I'm still learning

how to laugh again.

The neon buzzed and flickered against the wet asphalt, and Martin watched it pulse with the steady determination of a fading heartbeat. The sign was old now. Everything was old here. He stood in the rain and listened to the sound of water hitting his shoulders and thought about how time moves in only one direction.

Inside the Main Street Diner, chrome surfaces reflected fractured light that danced and spiraled across the walls like lost memories seeking their owners, while the linoleum floor bore the patient scars of ten thousand footsteps, each one carrying its own story of arrival or departure or both. The bell rang when he entered. It was a clean sound. A true sound.

Tommy sat at the counter. His shoulders were broad and heavy with years of manual labor, and his hands were scarred from wrenches and engines and the countless small betrayals of mechanical things. He did not turn around.

"Figured you'd show up." Tommy spoke to his coffee cup. The coffee was black and still steaming. "Read about your mother in the paper."

Martin sat. The stool creaked. It was the same sound it had made twenty years ago, when they were young and the future was a bright coin they thought they could spend forever.

"Hello, Tommy."

The waitress came. She wore a nametag that said Dorothy, but she was not the Dorothy they had known. That Dorothy was dead now. Everything dies eventually. Martin ordered coffee because it was the only thing to do.

"Still drinking it black?" Tommy asked, and his voice carried the weight of decades spent watching others leave while he remained, anchored to this town like a ship that had forgotten how to sail. "Some things don't change."

"Some things do."

Tommy's laugh cut through the diner's measured silence like a blade through old rope. "Yeah. Like you becoming the big Boston lawyer while I stayed here fixing engines that keep getting older while the parts get harder to find."

The coffee came. It was hot and bitter and true. Martin wrapped his hands around the mug and felt the heat seep into his fingers. The diner's air conditioning hummed with mechanical persistence. It had always been too cold here.

"You chose to stay," Martin said.

"Did I?" Tommy turned then, and his face was a map of years spent wondering about roads not taken. "Or did you choose to leave?"

Outside, the neon sign kept its vigil against the darkness. Pink light, then darkness. Pink light, then darkness. A rhythm as steady as regret.

"Remember that summer we were going to drive across the country?" Tommy's voice was soft now, dangerous with memory. "You had that AAA atlas. All those red marks showing where we'd stop. Like droplets of blood on a paper dream."

"We were eighteen."

"And then Harvard called, and suddenly the whole world got bigger for you and smaller for me at the same time." Tommy's fingers traced patterns in the condensation on his coffee mug. They were a mechanic's fingers, thick and strong and honest. "Funny how that works."

The silence between them grew like shadows at sunset, long and deep and full of things that could not be said. The coffee grew cold. The neon kept its rhythm. Pink light. Darkness. Pink light. Darkness.

"I never meant to leave you behind," Martin said. The words fell between them like autumn leaves, beautiful and dead.

"Doesn't matter what you meant." Tommy's voice was flat and hard as the surface of the counter. "You left. I stayed. The rest is just details."

Martin remembered summer afternoons in Tommy's garage, the air thick with motor oil and possibility, their hands black with grease as they rebuilt engines and futures with equal determination. Now the air smelled only of coffee and time.

"I miss you sometimes," Martin said.

"Miss what? The kid I was or the man I became?"

"Both. Neither. I don't know."

Tommy nodded slowly, understanding everything and nothing. "That's the thing about ghosts. They're always what we need them to be, not what they are."

The bell rang again. New customers entered, their voices carrying the light certainty of people who had never lost anything that mattered. Martin reached for his wallet.

"Don't," Tommy said. His voice was gravel and rust. "This one's on the house. For old times."

Martin stood. The vinyl seat exhaled beneath him like a final breath. "Take care, Tommy."

"You too, Marty. Try not to wait for the next funeral."

Outside, the rain had stopped, but the sidewalk held its wetness like a memory. Martin walked to his rental car, each step a small betrayal. Through the window, Tommy sat motionless at the counter, frozen in time like a photograph of permanence, his hands still cupped around a coffee mug that had grown cold with waiting.

Pink light. Darkness. Pink light. Darkness.

The neon kept its rhythm, and the night held its secrets, and some things changed while others remained as constant as gravity, as relentless as time, as eternal as regret.

When cartographers drew sea monsters

at the edges of their maps,

they weren’t wrong—

the unknown always has teeth.

I’ve seen truth bend like a river,

finding new paths to the sea,

watched it shimmer in heat waves

rising from summer roads.

What we call fact

is just the shortest distance

between two points of belief.

Ask any quantum particle.

My grandmother swore

she could feel storms coming

in her bones. The weather report

was never as precise.

Some nights, I dream in equations—

perfect proofs dissolving by morning,

leaving only the taste

of certainty behind.

Children know:

their monsters under beds

are as real as taxes,

as death, as gravity.

Truth lives in the space

between what we see

and what we can imagine seeing.

Like light behaving

as both wave and particle,

reality splits itself

to fit our observation.

What’s truer:

the aurora’s colors,

or the magnetic fields

that paint them?

Every memory rewrites itself

each time I remember.

Perhaps that’s the only honesty.

Truth is not a compass

pointing north—

it’s the journey of the needle

trembling, searching.