07
morning
The first thing to disappear was the wind.
Not all at once.
It simply forgot to move.
The willow became still.
Its long branches, which only moments before had swayed like green rivers, settled quietly against one another until they looked less like living things and more like ordinary wood. The light filtering through its leaves faded until every shade of green slowly surrendered to white.
The birds fell silent.
One by one.
As though some unseen conductor had lowered his hands.
Even the cicadas, whose chorus had carried the entire afternoon, vanished so gently that I could not remember the moment they stopped.
Only silence remained.
Not an empty silence.
A full one.
The kind that arrives just before waking.
Luna stood several yards ahead of me.
She wasn't looking down the path.
She was looking at me.
Waiting.
The same way she had waited all afternoon.
Patient.
Certain.
As though she knew something I did not.
I smiled.
"I'm coming."
She wagged her tail once.
Then...
everything became light.
Not bright.
Weightless.
The trees dissolved first.
Their trunks stretched upward into pale columns before melting into the sky. The path beneath my feet lost its texture. The scent of pine drifted away like smoke. The warmth on my skin slipped quietly into the distance until I could no longer tell whether I had ever been standing there at all.
The world unraveled without sadness.
As though it had only borrowed me for an afternoon.
______________
I opened my eyes.
Morning.
The ceiling above me slowly came into focus.
The fan turned lazily overhead, stirring the cool air just enough to make the curtains breathe against the open window. A narrow ribbon of sunlight reached across the hardwood floor, climbing the edge of the bed before resting quietly against my hand.
For several moments I didn't move.
The room felt unfamiliar.
Not because it had changed.
Because I had.
A soft sigh drifted up from the floor beside me.
Luna.
She lay curled into herself, one paw stretched toward the bed as though sometime during the night she had reached across the darkness just to make sure I was still there.
Without opening her eyes, her tail tapped gently against the floor.
Once.
Twice.
Then she settled again.
I laughed softly.
The sound surprised me.
It carried none of the heaviness I had grown accustomed to hearing in my own voice.
I sat on the edge of the bed and looked toward the window.
The pine trees beyond the glass swayed gently in the morning breeze.
A cardinal landed on the fence before disappearing into the branches.
Life had already begun without asking whether I was ready to join it.
The dream lingered only as a feeling.
Like trying to remember the exact warmth of someone's hand after they've let go.
The details had already begun dissolving.
But something remained.
Something impossible to name.
I dressed.
Filled Luna's water bowl.
Fastened her collar.
The familiar click of the leash echoed softly through the kitchen.
Instantly she appeared, her entire body alive with expectation.
Some things, I thought, never forget how to greet the day.
She waited by the front door.
I rested my hand on the knob for a moment longer than usual.
Then I opened it.
The Georgia heat welcomed us immediately.
Warm.
Heavy.
Alive.
The scent of pine drifted through the neighborhood exactly as it always had.
Somewhere farther away, a lawnmower hummed.
A sprinkler clicked rhythmically across a front yard.
An old man watered hanging ferns from his porch before lifting a hand in greeting.
Everything was exactly as I remembered.
Or perhaps...
exactly as it had always been.
Luna stepped onto the sidewalk.
I followed.
We walked in comfortable silence.
She stopped to investigate a patch of clover pushing stubbornly through a crack in the concrete.
I looked up.
The canopy of old oaks stretched across the street, their branches woven together like hands meeting above our heads. Sunlight poured through the leaves in slow-moving ribbons that drifted across the pavement with every passing breeze.
I could hear the pines.
Not just see them.
Their needles sighed softly against one another, carrying a sound so familiar I wondered how I had spent years overlooking it.
Then —
a dragonfly swept silently across the sidewalk.
Its wings caught the morning light, flashing silver, then blue, then disappearing into perfect transparency.
It hovered a few feet in front of us.
Suspended.
Weightless.
Its delicate wings trembled so quickly they seemed to disappear altogether, leaving only the quiet outline of something that belonged equally to air and light.
Luna stopped.
So did I.
Neither of us moved.
For a long moment, the dragonfly simply remained there, suspended in the warm morning as though time itself had paused to admire it.
Then, with effortless grace, it drifted higher.
It circled once above us before disappearing into the cathedral of oaks, where sunlight and shadow folded together until it became impossible to tell where the dragonfly ended and the morning began.
I watched until there was nothing left to see.
I didn't reach for my phone.
I didn't feel the need to hold onto the moment.
Some things ask only to be witnessed.
The breeze returned.
The pines whispered.
Wind chimes answered somewhere beyond the trees.
Luna gave the leash a gentle tug.
I smiled.
Then we continued down the sidewalk together, disappearing beneath the old oaks, while the neighborhood carried on around us exactly as it always had —
quietly waiting for someone to notice how beautiful it had been all along.