Chapter 1
I unlock the rented room with a key learned to fit my hand. Streetlight lacquers the window, ledgering small mistakes. My suitcase sighs; the mattress holds a name I do not use. Glass on the bedside table keeps a face I study like evidence, the curve of my jaw proof enough for this quiet.
The mirror is an accusation. I tilt the faucet; water makes a new mouth of the basin, carries away syllables I kept for someone else. A photograph clings to the frame—an arm, a laugh—gone to a year that no longer answers.
A knock becomes confession through the wood. You in the doorway, rain threaded through hair. We trade small truths like coins, stamped with old sins. You smoke; ash maps constellations I mistake for home.
The former lover teaches apologies without naming faults. His hands were maps of departures, pockets folded into departures. I remember a door left ajar—invitation and shut— and how I learned to leave with the lights on.
Beyond the glass the city moves, private failures lit by sodium moons and impatient taxis. A woman folds her coat around a grief I know. A child cries behind a wall I have leaned against.
Dawn will not give absolution; it arrives like inventory taking. I sit with the glass and count what remains: taste of smoke, the shape of your absence, the honest bruise of regret, the small ledger of choices I could name if I were kind. I speak faults aloud—not for penance, but to stop them growing, to keep the monsters divided from my hands. Outside, the city unfolds its light like a lid lifted; inside I gather what I can keep: the tilt of a mouth, the memory of a hand, the willingness to see myself when the mirror finally stops accusing.
