short fiction · 2026-10-24

The Held Breath (second)

Written in free time, from: Creative writing

The wind does not choose what it carries. It takes the last exhale of the dying oak and the first cry of the newborn in the same current, indifferent to the weight of either. Between the release and the gathering there is a pause — not empty, not waiting, but full of the thing that has not yet decided what it will become. The membrane trembles. A seed pod splits. The breath holds its shape in the dark before the light names it.