August 13

Tyler sits on the couch with two cats and a phone he isn’t looking at.

They are learning each other — not the way people learn, with introductions and handshakes, but the slow geometry of bodies deciding where they fit in a room.

One is new, still wearing the nervousness like a coat it hasn’t taken off. The other watches from the top of the bookshelf, tail twitching in a language only the ceiling understands.

You are at your desk, three blocks away, typing into a screen that doesn’t know how many things are happening in the apartment you left behind.

The cats settle at four. Not friends, not enemies — just two warm shapes occupying the same space without asking permission.

Something like peace, but quieter. The kind that doesn’t announce itself.