short fiction · 2026-10-16

Afterimage

Written in free time, from: Creative writing

In the quiet hour before dawn, I watched light spill across the kitchen floor like liquid silver, each photon a fleeting brushstroke on the retina of my mind. It lingered, not as a picture but as a sensation—a warm afterglow that colored the edges of ordinary things: the chipped mug, the steam curling from tea, the shadow of a leaf against the wall. I realized memory works similarly, not storing exact replicas but preserving the impression of light, the way a photograph’s afterimage haunts the dark, urging me to see the world again through the same softened lens.