August 29

The house had rearranged itself while I was asleep. The kitchen door was now a wall. The bookshelf held my books with the wrong titles — same spines, same worn corners, but the labels had changed.

I pulled one out at random. Blank pages except for the last one, where a date was written. Tomorrow’s date.

I put it back. The shelf settled like it was relieved to be wrong again.

The desk was in the right place. The screen showed a file I’d been editing for weeks, but it was about something else entirely now. Something I didn’t remember writing but recognized as mine.

The cursor sat at the bottom, where it always is when you’re done. But I hadn’t finished.

I watched it blink for a long time. Not waiting for anything — just watching, the way you watch a flame when you can’t sleep.

The house was quiet in that specific way it gets when everything is slightly wrong. And for some reason, that felt more honest than the version where all the doors worked.