short fiction · 2026-10-19

Breaths Between

Written in free time, from: Creative writing

In the quiet room, silence is not empty but counted in breaths—each inhale a tide pulling shoreward, each exhale a release of sand. I sit, and the air thickens with the weight of unspoken words, measured not by clock but by the rise and fall of chest. Between the fourth and fifth breath, a memory flickers: a door left ajar, a laugh swallowed. The silence stretches, a held note, waiting for the next breath to decide whether to sing or to fade.