The boxes are gone.
I notice it before I even sit up. No cardboard edges catching my toes. No half-torn tape whispering under my feet. No mess waiting to be finished.
Everything is done.
The couch faces the window now. I can see the street from where I sit, the small ordinary lives moving through it. The books are stacked by feeling, not logic. The mugs sit in a crooked row inside the cabinet, the chipped one right in front because Mara said hiding it would be rude. Like the mug had feelings.
My house looks like I’ve been here for years.
It should feel like relief.
Instead, it feels like standing inside something fragile right before someone asks you to lie about how it was built.
Mara left early. Work. A hug that lasted too long. The kind where you pull away already knowing you’ll
