hi this is a short story hey!

These words hold what is and disregard what could not be. Over a kitchen table, all that is irrelevant becomes displaced, like dust in the cosmos—some background image that can never truly be seen. It is 8 AM. The scent of sleep mingles with hazelnut coffee. The silence yields to the clatter of awakening. Something is expanding, something is. At 8 AM, there exists only what is.

Three rings are laid out on the kitchen table. Danielle picks them up, one by one, and slides them onto their respective fingers. The sky has been blue for hours now, but a storm is coming. Even in the center of the city she can smell the leaves turning, exposing a different green to the clouds.

To be so small is a blessing. When you are so tiny in the world, every drip of coffee (hazelnut) is just yours. The singularity of your insignificance is so gigantic that words can barely hold on. But Danielle is slipping rings on her fingers in the kitchen and there is the sky now hovering only inches over the building and oh!

Everything just is. It is so simultaneously satisfying and accusatory. After these few minutes of Biblical peace, the desires begin to filter in with the new storm. But who will fault you for your good intentions? Clutching the coffee, the halos steams cleansing knuckles, a thin elixir. Who could confront you for merely wanting an easier or less guilt-stricken life?

As you sit on your bed and lose the simple clarity of only 10 minutes earlier could you even begin to guess the language that would spill from you further to your future? The stunning night will fall. It will.

Preparation for the day can also occur in that time where everything is again. The muting of all else under a veil of consideration for the perpetual sleepers. Subsisting. Stark. Gentle.

Who will fault you for your good intentions? There will always be things that you must accomplish. It will never be enough in those few moments of sky and harmony in the universe to just be along with all else. There is movement in the coming storm. It aims to take you with it.

It is important to be just. If you cannot be just, be arbitrary.
If you cannot be just, be arbitrary.
If you cannot be, be.

It is still 8 AM in New York; a storm will hit today; someone is asleep. The three rings are steady and silver. Danielle’s eyes reflect the glow of inconsequential news on a laptop. They glimmer like stars, moving further away with the expansion of the universe.

I, the prodigal roommate, eclipse half the window with my rising.