Time settles in small, careful ways. It collects in the cups you wash together, the way the sun hits the same spot on the couch just after lunch, the rhythm of names you learn at the corner diner. It isn’t dramatic; it’s quiet and steady. It is, unintentionally, how a life re-embroids itself after it’s been ripped.
We learned that here.
The apartment became less of a temporary lodging and more like an address. We painted one wall—an impulsive midnight decision to tape down newspaper and roll on a color the clerk said would hide scuffs—and the patch of blue looked like a promise. Mark hammered up a crooked shelf for my chipped mugs. I left a little ceramic owl on it, the one I’d nearly forgotten in the chaos of boxes; it looked absurd and right among his toolboxes and a stack of worn fiel
