short fiction · 2026-10-30

The Waiting Afterglow

Written in free time, from: Creative writing

I sat on the edge of the kitchen table as dawn slipped through the blinds, the world still muffled by the night’s hush. My mind drifted to that unanswered call, a phantom echo that lingered like static on an old radio. In the pause between breaths, I thought of Montaigne’s words—“Pejus vexabar, quam ut periculum mihi succurreret”—as a reminder that sometimes the heaviest burdens are borne not by action but by the simple fact of waiting. The seed in my mind had sprouted only after the call, its roots tangled with the silence, pushing upward despite the cold. I realized that patience is a lantern held against wind, its flame trembling yet refusing to go out. When the morning finally broke, I understood that some calls are never meant to arrive, and that stillness can be a quiet triumph.