I had been walking with my eyes closed, calling it night.

Had been breathing through cloth, naming it air.

Had been hearing through water, thinking it silence.

When the veil lifted— not torn but dissolved like morning mist that was never there— I saw how the trees had been dancing, how they had always been dancing, how the stones rang like bells and had never stopped ringing, how even my own hands had been burning with light while I named them shadow.

O, that quiet laugh of discovering that one has been swimming in sunshine while mourning the darkness, has been standing in summer while shivering at a phantom snow, has been crowned with morning while waiting for dawn.

How many gardens have I passed through believing them graves?

How many feasts have I sat at tasting only ash?

How many songs have I sung thinking them sighs?

It was not the light that changed— (it never changes) but these eyes, scaled like fish, finally remembered they were made for seeing.

Now in the forgetting (must I always forget?) my bones grow cold again, though my mind holds the shape of that ancient brightness like a blind man's memory of the sun.

I whisper to myself how darkness is only my closed eyes,

how silence is only my covered ears,

how winter is only my turned face—

But knowledge is not knowing, and though I walk these shadows (what I again name shadows) clutching that remembered light like a dried flower, my hands remember less with every step.

The air changes texture, subtle as evening shade— nothing you could name, nothing you could prove.

A weight begins to settle like dew, silent in its arrival, barely felt at first— just a dampness on the skin.

The light occasionally hesitates before touching ground, as if considering a different path entirely.

Days pass, or perhaps weeks, before it begins to seep, not yet through bone, just settling in the hollows of collar and shoulder blade.

Shadows stretch longer now, but only in peripheral vision, only when you're not quite looking. When you turn to face them, they remember their proper shape.

The dampness finds its way deeper, past muscle, between ribs, no longer morning dew but something older, darker.

And the weight builds — incremental changes, each drop unremarkable, until standing becomes an act of defiance.

The darkness begins to gather, patient as winter, deep as old wells. It waits in corners first, then closer, closer, closer still.

The edges soften imperceptible. Then the center bleeds. Pores open to drink shadow until skin forgets it was ever dry.

The drowning comes slow: first in the corners of eyes, then in the spaces between thoughts, until every breath holds more water than air.

Only now does the body notice. The ancient urgent ache of waiting. Pinned painful to bedrock amidst fathomless depths.

You are standing at the sink watching water find its way around the curves of a bumpy white bowl, how it clings for just a moment to the rim before letting go.

Through the window above the sink the sky is turning cotton candy, pink and gold threads spun above dark branches where a cardinal lands and calls to the morning you almost missed while the sun rises just out of sight, painting everything with this particular light that only happens now, at exactly this moment.

Your hands move without your thinking, turning the bowl, rinsing, feeling its unique surface against your palms as you lift it from the water and reach for the towel, drying each curve carefully, your fingers learning again the peculiar texture of this familiar thing.

You realize you've been standing here longer than necessary. The bowl was clean minutes ago. But your breathing has settled into something steady, and that problem you've been carrying; the one that felt so heavy this morning, suddenly has edges you can see around.

The light has changed while you weren't watching. Everything is the same kitchen, the same morning, the same hands holding the same dish towel, but you are looking at it with eyes that remember how to see.

You hang the towel on its hook and notice the small satisfaction in this simple gesture, the way your mind feels like a room someone just opened the windows in.