Surface Memory

The air stands still, like it’s listening. Not loud. Just ready. A single shimmer folds across the lake, sunlight playing tag with silence.

You pause. Not in fear. Not in reverence. Just in that moment where stillness isn’t a lack of motion, but a kind of truth you forgot to name.

A ripple waits inside your chest, the kind that doesn’t disturb, but rewrites.

It’s that exact frame of summer: when the heat lifts off the pavement, when your breath matches the breeze, when you remember how your own shadow used to follow you differently.

The surface gleams, not begging for meaning, just offering it. In the light. In the pause. In the hush that comes before memory chooses to speak up again.

And all you do is notice. That’s the shift. That’s the untangling. Not a breakthrough, not a breakdown, just clarity, like a reflection reintroduced.

The world didn’t change. You just turned toward it a little slower. A little surer.