Elysium

Crows sleep on the wires like black notes, waiting for a breath to turn them into song.

I stand just beyond the doorway, one foot tucked behind the other like I might step back at any moment. Though I don’t. I never do. I only hover. This house is no longer a home, just a frame of memory nailed together by routine. And the world beyond it, well, that feels like a rumor spoken in another language. Something I’ve forgotten how to pronounce.

The sky is pale and indecisive. Cloudless, but dim. It looks like something once bright that’s been scrubbed too many times. Like bones bleached in a field, waiting to be mistaken for sacred.

No one else is out. Even the wind has paused, holding its breath, maybe out of respect for the stillness, or maybe because it’s as unsure as I am about what happens next. I hear the wires hum above me, a thin electric whine threading through the silence. Not a sound you notice until there’s nothing else left.

There’s a bench across the street, empty. Someone left a coffee cup on its edge, lipsticked and abandoned, its heat long gone. It’s the kind of thing you stare at and imagine stories around. A woman waiting. A conversation that didn’t go well. Or maybe she just got up and walked away, thinking she’d come back. I envy her for that.

My limbs feel like ideas. My hands twitch with phantom weight, as if they once held something warm or important. Someone’s hand, maybe. Or a letter. Or a lighter. I can’t tell anymore. All I know is that my body remembers motion, but can’t decide if it should trust it.

Time has loosened. I can feel it unraveling, not fast, not violent, Just quietly slipping through its own seams. Some days I’m sure it’s already gone and I’m just standing in its echo.

I think about the things I used to believe without question: the sun would rise, people would call, silence was temporary. I miss certainty more than I miss anything else.

The crows above me remain statuesque, heads tucked, still as punctuation. They’ve chosen sleep over flight, pause over purpose. And I wonder. Do they dream of air? Or is stillness enough?

I shift slightly, enough to feel the ground acknowledge me. It doesn’t welcome or reject. It just accepts. The world is full of these neutral things now. Objects that used to mean something and now just are. Doors, stairs, phones. Me.

I don’t want to go back inside. Not because there's something waiting out here, but because I’m tired of pretending there’s something in there. Inside, everything is numbered. Objects live where they’re supposed to. Cups in cupboards. Shoes lined up. The performance of a life. Out here, even stillness feels more honest.

I take one step forward. Just one. The gravel crunches softly under my heel. A sound so small, so fragile, it startles me. Like I’ve interrupted something sacred.

But no one turns. Not the houses, not the empty street. Not the sky or the birds.

I stay there, one foot ahead now, unsure if this is progress or just rearrangement. But for the first time in what could be hours or days or a season, I let myself wonder, what if this stillness isn’t waiting for me to act? What if I’m just part of it?

The thought should terrify me, but it doesn’t. It settles inside my chest like a key in the right lock, not turning yet, but fitted.

And above me, the crows sleep on the wires like black notes, waiting for a breath to turn them into song.