The morning sat still in between glass and wind. Inside, the hum of a fan whispered against the silence—steady, indifferent, like time itself. Outside, the street glowed with the dull ache of ordinary life: parked cars, trimmed hedges, a bicycle leaning as though tired of waiting.
She watched it all from behind the pane, her breath fogging the reflection of a world both hers and not hers.
The coffee cooled untouched, the light shifted, and in that small room of metal and shadow, she felt the strange mercy of being alive: unnoticed, unneeded, but undeniably here.
She hummed softly herself, as if in reply, as if in the birth of new dialogue; maybe it was a mumble with a tender cadence. For what is a life but this, she thought: to be flung, to be struck, and still to sing.
Photography by Xiang Tiange
As a school teacher, composer, and photographer, I try each day to carry less interest in the things I already know, and more fascination for what I decide to do about the things I don’t know.