Before Sound Returns

It was early.

The kind of hour where sound hasn't made up its mind

about returning.

The morning tasted of ripe stonefruit,

heat caught in the sill.

Cicadas had started early,

their song like a wire held too tight

between trees.

I was rinsing a glass.

The water ran warm from the tap—

the kind of warmth that doesn’t belong to you

but passes through,

carrying light and dust and something

you don’t yet know you’ve lost.

Outside, the air shimmered.

Hydrangeas caught blue in patches,

like bruises surfacing

on something that had forgotten pain.

The daffodils I picked before breakfast

were already tilting

toward whatever comes after yellow.

My bicycle leaned where I’d left it,

its wheels sighing

into soft ground.

Even the shadows seemed tired.

Even the light.

I stood still,

watching the sun catch in the glass,

then refract across my hand

like a child tracing something she can’t quite draw—

soft, bright, unfinished.

It made my skin glow,

not like grace,

but like fever.

There was a girl once—

quiet, pale, all elbows and mystery—

who told me sea foam was proof

that water remembered

where it had been.

She said it stayed

for the ones who watched the tide leave

and thought that meant ending.

I hadn’t remembered her in years.

But the light remembered.

It reached through the glass

like a hand,

finding her in me

before I could.

The toast popped.

The kettle began its slow steam-song.

And still I stood there,

my fingers lit up

like votives

in a church with no name.

I didn’t drink the water.

I let it settle.

Sometimes summer doesn’t ask for your attention.

It just enters you

with something warm

and irreversible.