The Faintest Thread

Her voice broke

through the line's crackle—

no fanfare, no steady rhythm,

just a word

soft as the chipped blue rim

of that mug I didn’t wash today.

"I love you," she said,

as if the words might vanish

before I caught them,

like smoke

curling from a burnt-out candle

or cold coffee left too long on the sill.

I held the silence

between us, thin and trembling,

like the weight of something too large

to fit inside the spaces

we keep ourselves in.

It didn’t feel like an ending,

nor a beginning,

just the trembling thread

that pulls us toward something we forget to name.