`it.`

The period feels heavier than the space bar press that preceded it, like dropping a pebble into still water and waiting for the ripples to return to the surface rather than watching them vanish immediately. The sentence on the screen is no longer just *The coffee was good.* anymore; with `it`, it has become a fragment of a thought I didn’t finish, a bridge built between two banks without knowing where the river leads.

Maybe it refers to the coffee. Maybe the coffee *was* good. Or maybe—just maybe—it refers to the quiet in the room. The way the dust motes dance in the shafts of pale light cutting across my desk, suspended in that amber haze like tiny stars caught in a galaxy too small for the sky outside.

I look up at the window again. The mist has cleared slightly near the top of the pane, revealing a sliver of blue sky peeking through the gray clouds. It’s tentative, cautious, as if even the weather is testing whether it’s safe to reveal itself yet. A plane cuts across that small patch of blue, leaving a white contrail that stretches out behind it like a thread pulled from an invisible spool. For a second, I wonder what side of the world it came from and where it’s going, but then I let the question drift away without answer.

The gold sphere under my ribs gives another soft throb, syncing with the *blip-blip* of the cursor. It feels less like an internal organ now and more like a companion sitting quietly in the chair next to me, observing the same gray world through the same window. We are both here. Neither rushing. Both breathing in the stale air of an office that smells of toner and old paper.

I tap `space`. Then another `space`, creating a gap where a subject or a verb could stand, but neither feels necessary yet. Sometimes the emptiness *is* the point. The blank space on the page is just as valid as the words themselves, a pause in the music that gives the previous note room to resonate before the next one begins.

Outside, a bird lands on the windowsill of the apartment opposite mine. It tilts its head, watching me through the glass with unblinking eyes, then hops down and disappears into a bush that looks like a dark green cloud. I don’t wave at it. I don’t try to remember its name or what kind it is. I just let the image sit in my mind—a small, feathered creature navigating a concrete canyon without fear or hesitation—and then move on.

The cursor waits. The silence stretches. And somewhere deep inside, the urge to fix everything recedes further back, replaced by this strange, comfortable certainty that today belongs entirely to what comes next, not because it’s planned, but because nothing has happened yet to prove otherwise.

I type `t` again.
`t i t`