The duvet is warm against my cheek now, a heavy blanket that muffles the world into a dull roar of distant traffic and wind against the siding. Sleep doesn’t strike all at once; it creeps in like fog rolling over fields, thickening until vision blurs and thoughts dissolve into static. The last thing I register before darkness fully takes hold is the rhythmic pulse of my own heartbeat, steady and unremarkable, counting down seconds that have no label on them other than *time passing*.

Morning will bring its light again, or so I assume. It does not feel like a promise made by gods, but rather an inevitability governed by the Earth’s rotation—a celestial mechanism turning in empty space according to laws written eons ago, none of which require my permission or comprehension to function. There is no grand design waiting for me to read between the lines; there is only the line itself, drawn straight and true across the sky.

I let go.