It was meant to be a clean subtraction—
a one-road village, hedges neat as paper margins,
the smell of wet hay in the mornings,
and no one who knew his name.
The house leaned slightly east,
as if bracing against a wind that had long since gone.
He told himself he liked the silence,
but it was the kind of silence that hears you breathe.
Days he walked the same field,
counting fence posts until the sky
dropped behind the hills like a closing lid.
He thought distance would be an eraser.
Instead, his past arrived early—
in the cracked mirror above the sink,
in the moth that beat itself senseless
against the kitchen light, night after night.
It spoke in his own voice,
patient, incurious,
expecting him all along.
He sat in the narrow kitchen,
the kettle’s slow boil filling the room.
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Originally Posted by tailor STATELY
