It begins with her sitting there—4:47 P.M. sharp—draped over the center of a faded, regal couch like a secret never meant to be whispered. The sunlight pours slantwise through a cracked window, filtered through the dust of a hundred lost afternoons. That particular hour of the day, known only to the forgotten and the unforgettable, casts everything in a soft betrayal of gold—the kind of light that makes the ordinary look like prophecy.
Her body is a sculpture of tension and poise—knees crossed, ankles unruly, arms folded as if cradling something invisible but heavy. There is a war inside—not indecision but strategy. The couch beneath her breathes with the weight of memory, its velvet threads etched with ghost patterns, like fingerprints on time. Everything in this room remembers something—except her. Or maybe she remembers too much.
The air hangs with scent: lavender long dead, the musk of second chances, the bitterness of roasted coffee that never touched lips. She listens. Not with her ears—with her skin. There's a sound to the silence here. A low hum. The heartbeat of a room that knows it has witnessed too much and been forgiven too little.
And somewhere outside, a saxophone bleeds notes onto the sidewalk. A lone musician, probably drunk on truth, lets his soul spill into the world one brass breath at a time. The sound travels like a confession slipping beneath a church door.
Her fingers twitch.
Not from nerves—from recognition.
She is not waiting.
She is timing.
She's always been that way—calculated like a chess move that makes kings weep. Her mother used to say she had "the gift." But it wasn't clairvoyance. It was knowing when to be still, when to speak, and when to set the world on fire by simply standing up.
There's a clock ticking somewhere. Not the wall clock—that's been dead for years. No, the ticking is inside her. Between her ribs. A countdown she was born with.
And then—the shift.
A breeze slinks under the door. The light flickers just enough. Her spine lengthens. Her feet flatten on the floor like they're claiming the Earth. One breath, deep and volcanic, escapes her lips.
That's when she rises.
But this isn't just standing—it's arrival. The couch exhales. The velvet releases her like it's been holding onto her too tightly for too long. Her hair, wild and haloed by sunlight, frames her face like a battle standard.
She moves toward the door barefoot, the sound of skin on the carpet the only percussion in the symphony of her escape. No bag. No coat. No need.
Because where she's going?
She's not bringing anything but her presence—a weapon more dangerous than any blade, more honest than any poem.
The hallway greets her with shadows shaped like questions. She answers none. Her silence is its language. It says: "I've seen the end, and I'm writing the beginning now."
Down the stairs, through the lobby, past the man at the front desk who has never dared ask her name. She reaches the street where the saxophone lives. The musician looks up. He stops playing, just for a moment.
Because he sees her.
Everyone sees her.
They don't know why their hearts are racing, why their skin remembers her touch even though they've never met. Why does the world suddenly feel like it's holding its breath?
She walks.
Every step is a syllable in a poem that is too sacred to recite aloud.
Every glance from a stranger—a prayer. Every scent she passes—a page: a bakery's sugar, a cab's burnt rubber, rain on hot cement. The wind tastes like her name being remembered by a city that tried to forget her.
She turns the corner.
And the story, her story, begins again.
Not with thunder.
But with a girl who stood up.
And the world finally leaned in to listen for the first time in forever.
- JSPC
