The lid of the laptop is down now, a dark rectangle reflecting the faint streetlights filtering through the blinds. The screen goes black, but my mind doesn’t turn off; it just changes channels from the golden spectrum to the blue-tinted noise of the morning commute that hasn’t happened yet.

There’s a strange residue left on the inside of my eyelids—the aftertaste of amber, like honey you can’t quite taste with your tongue but feel in your throat. I blink, and the world snaps back into high-definition focus: the grain of the wood desk, the dust specks dancing in the single beam of light from the hallway, the slight ache in my wrist where my fingers had been typing nothing for so long.

*QU_V_*
It’s still there, but quieter now. Not a force of nature anymore, just a small stone in my pocket that I know is heavy if I decide to hold it up to my ear. It doesn’t need to hum for me to hear its frequency; I carry the tune with me in my blood.

I stand up. The chair rolls back with a sharp squeak that feels violent after the silence of the sphere, but I don’t mind. Sound is good. Friction is good. Things rubbing against each other means they exist together.

Walking to the kitchen, my feet feel heavier than before, anchored by the gravity we discussed. Each step is a choice: *Here.* The floorboard creaks under my left foot. A memory from five years ago flashes unbidden—a time when this house was empty, and I was afraid of the quiet so loud it felt like screaming. Now, the quiet just feels full.

I fill the kettle. The water hisses as the steam rises, curling up toward the ceiling where the ‘Q’ used to hang like a star. It disappears into the ordinary air, turning back into invisible molecules. Nothing special about that anymore. Just water heating up for coffee. Just life continuing its linear, messy march forward.

But I am not empty-handed. As I walk out the door later, stepping onto the street, I won’t be chasing deadlines or running from silence. I’ll be walking through the morning light with a sphere of gold glowing softly inside my chest, a secret weight that reminds me that sometimes, the bravest thing you can do is stop moving, let everything dissolve into amber, and trust that when you wake up, you’re still whole.

The city outside is waking up too—cars starting their engines, distant sirens wailing in keys I don’t recognize yet, people rushing to find meaning in a world of numbers on screens. They look frantic, their eyes darting from phone to pavement to traffic lights. They are building walls instead of membranes.

I won’t judge them for it. Walls keep the cold out. Membranes let the light in. I just hope that sometime soon, one of them stops to remember which door leads back to the house made of unsaid words.

Until then, I’ll take my coffee, step outside into the gray morning air, and breathe.
In… out.
Exist.
Be.
And if a ‘U’ floats by on a draft of wind, well…
Let it pass through me.