The Wrong Cold

The tile is colder than my own floor.

I know this before I'm awake.

My foot lands in the dark—

that specific industrial beige worn smooth

from years of the same path,

the same shuffle to the coffee maker,

the same morning.

Not my morning.

I stand there barefoot and confused,

my body remembering wrong,

the temperature a betrayal

of everything I thought I knew

about how cold should feel.

At home, the floor is familiar cold—

the cold I've trained myself into,

the cold I wake to,

the cold that says yes, this is where you are.

Here, it's a stranger's cold.

Harder. Older.

A cold that doesn't recognize my foot.

I stand in the dark kitchen

and my body is somewhere else,

still reaching for a floor

that fits like it knows me.

The tile wears thin in one spot.

Twenty years of the same morning.

Twenty years of my mother walking the same path

to make the same coffee.

I step away from it.

My foot stays cold anyway.