​Sage existed in the quiet spaces between things.

​In a world that roared with frantic ambition, roaring engines, and overlapping voices, Sage moved like a whispered breath across glass. She lived in a small, top-floor apartment overlooking the eastern edge of the city, where the brick buildings surrendered to the rolling hills beyond. Her home was an archive of solitude: tall, overflowing bookshelves where the dust settled like fine snow; a desk scarred by decades of fountain pen ink; and a singular, oversized armchair upholstered in faded velvet where she spent her evenings watching the amber streetlights flicker to life.

​She was entirely alone.

​Not in the dramatic way that poets wrote about—not a tragedy born of sudden ruin or catastrophic loss—but rather through the slow, inevitable erosion of time. Her parents had passed when she was young, fading into framed photographs that slowly lost their color against the wallpaper. She had no siblings, no lingering lovers, and no close confidants. Her life was self-contained, a closed circuit of quiet routines. Every morning, she brewed a single cup of Earl Grey tea, drank it while watching the mist lift from the valley, and then spent her hours restoring old, damaged books for the municipal library.

​To the few people who crossed her path, Sage was a gentle fixture. The librarians knew her as the quiet woman with copper hair and observant, amber-brown eyes who could coax a crumbling nineteenth-century binding back to life with linen thread and patience. But even to them, she was transparent. She left no ripples. She spoke only when necessary, and when she smiled, it was soft and fleeting, like sunlight catching the edge of a winter cloud.

​Yet, beneath her quiet exterior beat a heart of immense, untamed depth. Sage felt the world with a crushing intensity. The sound of rain tapping against her windowpane could bring tears to her eyes; the sight of a discarded, dog-eared paperback on a park bench felt like an abandoned soul. Because she had no one to share her inner universe with, she poured her soul into the margins of the books she mended—writing tiny, poetic observations in pencil, knowing no one would ever read them.

​She was a ghost walking among the living, not because she was unhappy, but because she had learned that to be unattached was to be safe from the devastating weight of goodbyes.

-cut-

​The shift began on a Tuesday in late October.

​The autumn wind carried the sharp scent of woodsmoke and damp earth. Sage was walking home from the library, her canvas bag heavy with a fragile volume of nineteenth-century poetry she had taken home to re-spine. As she crossed the cobblestone square near her apartment, she noticed a small, peculiar antique shop tucked between a closed bakery and a dimly lit tailor.

​She had passed this storefront a thousand times, yet she had never seen it open. Today, however, the door stood slightly ajar, a warm, golden glow spilling onto the grey pavement. A hand-painted wooden sign hung from the knob: Curiosities of the Unclaimed.

​Drawn by an inexplicable pull—a quiet gravitational force she could neither name nor resist—Sage pushed the door open. A brass bell chimed overhead, its tone unusually resonant, lingering in the air long after the door clicked shut.

​The interior was a labyrinth of forgotten treasures. Towering stacks of leather-bound ledgers, brass astrolabes, faded velvet ribbons, and oil paintings of anonymous faces crowded the room. The air smelled of old paper, dried lavender, and cedarwood.

​Behind a mahogany counter stood an old man with eyes the color of polished amber, mirroring Sage's own. He wasn't surprised by her entrance; rather, he looked at her with the knowing expression of someone who had been expecting a visitor for a very long time.

​"You took your time getting here, Sage," the old man said, his voice soft, resembling dry leaves scuffing across stone.

​Sage paused, her fingers tightening around the strap of her bag. "I’m sorry? Do I know you?"

​"Not yet," the shopkeeper replied gently, walking out from behind the counter. He carried a small, unadorned wooden box carved from dark walnut. He placed it on the glass surface between them. "Names are slippery things anyway. What matters is what you carry."

​"I carry books," Sage said, her voice barely louder than a whisper. "I mend what time has broken."

​"And who mends you?"

​The question struck Sage with the force of a physical blow. She stood in silence, the ambient sounds of the city outside fading away entirely, leaving only the ticking of a grandfather clock in the corner. No one had ever asked her that. In all her years of solitary existence, her own well-being had been an unattended garden, growing wild and untamed in the shadows.

​"I don't need mending," she murmured defensively, though her voice lacked conviction.

​"Everyone needs a witness, child," the old man said, sliding the wooden box an inch closer to her. "To live entirely unseen is to slowly dissolve. You have spent your whole life practicing how to vanish so that the world cannot hurt you. But what happens when you truly disappear?"

​Sage stared at the box. Without waiting for her permission, the old man lifted the lid. Inside lay a single, blank journal bound in supple, midnight-blue leather. There were no lines on the pages, only thick, cream-colored parchment that seemed to absorb the light around it.

​"Write your own story, Sage," the old man whispered. "Before someone else writes your ending for you."

​When Sage looked up to answer, the shopkeeper was gone. The room remained, the books remained, the ticking clock remained, but the space behind the counter was empty. A gentle draft stirred the papers on the desk, and when Sage reached out to touch the wooden box, she found her fingers brushing against empty air. The box, the shop, and the old man dissolved into a mist of golden light, leaving Sage standing alone in the middle of an empty, abandoned alleyway where a brick wall had stood for a century.

​Sage returned to her apartment in a daze.

​She placed the canvas bag on her desk, but her hands were trembling. She felt transparent—more transparent than she had ever felt before. The encounter in the alleyway defied logic, yet the weight of it pressed heavily against her chest.

​She walked to the window and looked down at the street. The amber streetlights were buzzing to life, casting long, fractured shadows across the pavement. She looked at her reflection in the glass: the pale skin, the copper hair falling loosely around her shoulders, the amber-brown eyes that held an infinite, quiet sadness.

​To live entirely unseen is to slowly dissolve.

​The old man’s words echoed in her mind, repeating with the relentless rhythm of a heartbeat. For years, she had believed her solitude was a sanctuary. She had guarded her isolation like a precious jewel, convincing herself that by needing no one, she was invincible. But looking out at the vast, breathing city, a terrifying realization bloomed within her: she wasn't invincible. She was simply unremembered.

​If she vanished tomorrow—if she simply stopped breathing in this quiet, high-ceilinged room—how long would it take for the world to notice? The library would wonder where she was when Monday morning arrived, perhaps call her name twice across the quiet reading room, and then they would hire someone else. The milkman would stop knocking. The dust would settle thicker on her velvet armchair. Within a month, her existence would be completely erased, leaving no more trace than a footprint washed away by the tide.

​Panic, cold and sharp, seized her throat. For the first time in her life, Sage wept. She cried not for any specific grief, but for the sheer, crushing weight of her own invisibility. She knelt beside her velvet chair, pressing her forehead against the rough fabric, letting the silent tears fall until her chest ached.

​When the crying finally subsided, leaving her hollow and exhausted, she noticed something resting on the seat of her armchair.

​It was the midnight-blue journal.

​It had followed her. Or perhaps, it had been waiting for her all along.

-cut-

​Sage stood up slowly, her legs shaking beneath her. She walked over to the armchair, picked up the journal, and carried it to her desk. The leather was cool to the touch, soft like skin.

​She opened to the first page. The parchment was completely blank, waiting.

​Beside the journal sat her favorite fountain pen, filled with deep, midnight-black ink. Sage uncapped it, the familiar metallic scent filling the air. She hovered the nib over the paper, hesitating. What did a ghost have to say? What history did an unwritten life possess?

​She closed her eyes and let her hand move.

​I am Sage, she wrote. I have lived in the quiet margins of a loud world. I built walls of silence because I was afraid that if I let anyone in, they would eventually leave, and I would be left with a ruin I could not repair.

​As the words formed on the page, something extraordinary happened.

​The ink didn't just sit on the paper; it seemed to sink in and glow with a soft, internal luminescence. With every sentence she wrote, Sage felt a heavy anchor in her chest lift slightly. She wrote about her parents' faded photographs. She wrote about the smell of old paper and the gentle hum of the library. She wrote about the fear of disappearing, and the even greater fear of never truly having lived.

​She wrote for hours, losing track of time as the moon climbed high into the velvet sky, casting silver beams across her desk. She wrote until her hand cramped and the ink well ran dry.

​By the time she finished, she had filled twenty pages. Her entire life—every quiet sorrow, every hidden joy, every fleeting moment of beauty she had ever witnessed—was now captured in ink. She was no longer just a collection of unspoken thoughts floating through an empty apartment. She had given herself shape. She had given herself substance.

​She closed the journal with a soft thud.

​As the cover snapped shut, a brilliant flash of warm, golden light erupted from the book, filling the entire room. Sage gasped, shielding her eyes with her hands. The light was blinding, yet it carried no heat; it felt like standing in the middle of a sunlit meadow during the first warm days of spring.

​The sound of rushing wind filled her ears—a chorus of a thousand whispered voices, reading her words, acknowledging her existence, calling her name.

​Sage. Sage. Sage.

​And then, as quickly as it had begun, the light vanished.

​Silence returned to the apartment, but it was a different kind of silence. It was no longer empty or suffocating. It was resonant, alive, and warm.

​Sage opened her eyes.

​At first, she thought nothing had changed. The bookshelves still lined the walls; the velvet armchair still sat in the corner; the city lights still flickered below. But when she looked down at her hands, she gasped.

​Her skin, usually pale and translucent, held a warm, vibrant glow. She could feel her heartbeat—steady, strong, and undeniable—thrumming against her ribs. She took a deep breath, and the air tasted sweeter, richer, filled with the scent of rain and blooming jasmine that hadn't been there a moment before.

​She turned to look at her desk. The midnight-blue journal was gone. In its place lay a single, fresh sprig of white jasmine.

​Sage walked over to her window and pushed it wide open. The cool autumn wind rushed in, tangling her copper hair, but she didn't shiver. She leaned out, looking down at the street below.

​For the first time in her life, she didn't feel like a shadow. She felt real. She felt present.

​Down on the pavement, a young girl walking home from an evening shift paused, looked up toward Sage’s window, and smiled. It was a fleeting, quiet gesture, but Sage caught it, held it in her heart, and smiled back.

​Sage closed the window, turned away from the glass, and walked toward her apartment door. She didn't look back at the empty desk or the velvet chair. She reached out, turned the brass knob, and stepped out into the hallway, ready to meet a world she was finally a part of.

But still it rang in her head—

𝐶𝑜𝑛𝑠𝑖𝑑𝑒𝑟 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑐ℎ𝑖𝑙𝑑, 𝑤ℎ𝑜 𝑚𝑜𝑣𝑒𝑠 𝑡ℎ𝑟𝑜𝑢𝑔ℎ 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑤𝑜𝑟𝑙𝑑 𝑙𝑖𝑘𝑒 𝑎 𝑟𝑖𝑣𝑒𝑟 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑡 ℎ𝑎𝑠 𝑛𝑜𝑡 𝑦𝑒𝑡 𝑙𝑒𝑎𝑟𝑛𝑒𝑑 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑏𝑎𝑛𝑘𝑠. (𝐼𝑠 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑟𝑖𝑣𝑒𝑟 𝑤𝑟𝑜𝑛𝑔 𝑓𝑜𝑟 𝑓𝑙𝑜𝑤𝑖𝑛𝑔?)

𝑌𝑜𝑢 𝑎𝑠𝑘: 𝐻𝑎𝑣𝑒 𝑦𝑜𝑢 𝑛𝑜𝑡𝑖𝑐𝑒𝑑 ℎ𝑜𝑤 𝑤𝑒 𝑠𝑝𝑒𝑎𝑘 𝑜𝑓 𝑜𝑢𝑟 𝑦𝑜𝑢𝑡ℎ 𝑎𝑠 𝑖𝑓 𝑤𝑒 𝑤𝑒𝑟𝑒 𝑏𝑙𝑖𝑛𝑑 𝑚𝑒𝑛 𝑠𝑡𝑢𝑚𝑏𝑙𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑖𝑛 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑑𝑎𝑟𝑘? 𝐴𝑠 𝑖𝑓 𝑤𝑒 𝑝𝑜𝑠𝑠𝑒𝑠𝑠𝑒𝑑 𝑛𝑜 𝑠𝑒𝑛𝑠𝑒?

𝑇ℎ𝑖𝑠 𝑖𝑠 𝑎𝑛 𝑖𝑙𝑙𝑢𝑠𝑖𝑜𝑛.

𝑊𝑒 𝑤𝑒𝑟𝑒 𝑛𝑜𝑡 𝑠𝑒𝑛𝑠𝑒𝑙𝑒𝑠𝑠; 𝑤𝑒 𝑤𝑒𝑟𝑒 𝑢𝑛𝑏𝑜𝑢𝑛𝑑.

𝑊𝑒 𝑎𝑐𝑡𝑒𝑑 𝑤𝑖𝑡ℎ𝑜𝑢𝑡 𝑡ℎ𝑒 ℎ𝑒𝑎𝑣𝑦 𝑐𝑙𝑜𝑎𝑘 𝑜𝑓 𝑐𝑎𝑙𝑐𝑢𝑙𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛, 𝑤𝑖𝑡ℎ𝑜𝑢𝑡 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑓𝑒𝑎𝑟 𝑜𝑓 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑚𝑖𝑟𝑟𝑜𝑟, 𝑤𝑖𝑡ℎ𝑜𝑢𝑡 𝑡ℎ𝑒 ℎ𝑢𝑛𝑔𝑒𝑟 𝑓𝑜𝑟 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑛𝑜𝑑 𝑜𝑓 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑐𝑟𝑜𝑤𝑑. 𝑇ℎ𝑒𝑟𝑒 𝑤𝑎𝑠 𝑛𝑜 𝑝𝑟𝑒𝑠𝑠𝑢𝑟𝑒 𝑡𝑜 𝑤𝑒𝑎𝑟 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑠ℎ𝑎𝑝𝑒 𝑜𝑓 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑠𝑡𝑜𝑛𝑒.

𝑁𝑜𝑤, 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑠𝑒𝑎𝑠𝑜𝑛 ℎ𝑎𝑠 𝑡𝑢𝑟𝑛𝑒𝑑.

𝑊𝑒 𝑤𝑒𝑖𝑔ℎ 𝑒𝑣𝑒𝑟𝑦 𝑠𝑚𝑎𝑙𝑙 𝑏𝑟𝑒𝑎𝑡ℎ. 𝑁𝑜𝑡 𝑏𝑒𝑐𝑎𝑢𝑠𝑒 𝑡ℎ𝑒 ℎ𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑖𝑠 𝑤𝑒𝑎𝑘, 𝑏𝑢𝑡 𝑏𝑒𝑐𝑎𝑢𝑠𝑒 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑒𝑦𝑒𝑠 𝑜𝑓 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑣𝑖𝑙𝑙𝑎𝑔𝑒 𝑎𝑟𝑒 𝑎𝑙𝑤𝑎𝑦𝑠 𝑢𝑝𝑜𝑛 𝑢𝑠, 𝑗𝑢𝑑𝑔𝑖𝑛𝑔, 𝑒𝑥𝑝𝑒𝑐𝑡𝑖𝑛𝑔.

𝐼𝑡 𝑖𝑠 𝑎 𝑠𝑡𝑟𝑎𝑛𝑔𝑒 𝑎𝑙𝑐ℎ𝑒𝑚𝑦.

𝑊𝑒 𝑑𝑖𝑑 𝑛𝑜𝑡 𝑙𝑜𝑠𝑒 𝑜𝑢𝑟 𝑠𝑒𝑛𝑠𝑒 𝑎𝑠 𝑤𝑒 𝑔𝑟𝑒𝑤 𝑡𝑎𝑙𝑙.

_______________________

Drowned in unconsciousness,

I flip pages

bearing the blocks of evolution

and revolution,

with windows facing measured light.

I bend beneath the weight of hope and plight.

The childhood door shrinks,

the branches in my courtyard outgrow,

and I mumble and whisper to the walls,

hoping they'll return a nostalgic ball.

The ball returns dipped in ink;

I crawl, I bend, but now I do not shrink.

He placed flowers in my vase,

wild as a beautiful mess.

He drew clouds shaped like laughter

above my head,

but now all I own

are prickled sheets upon my bed.

How can I believe

tomorrow's fruit won't carry bitterness?

Light crawls like a creeper at sunset;

half my consciousness slips into shade.

Old socks lie tangled in pairs,

old shirts no longer fit.

The ball, once splashed with ink,

fades upon my shoes, and I trace my way back.

I bend, and this time, I shrink.

Only consciousness refuses.

__________________________

[Here it ends, and I hope you love that 𝑑𝑜𝑠𝑡𝑜𝑒𝑣𝑠𝑘𝑦 𝑜𝑛𝑐𝑒 𝑤𝑟𝑜𝑡𝑒 “𝑖 𝑤𝑎𝑛𝑡 𝑡𝑜 𝑡𝑎𝑙𝑘 𝑎𝑏𝑜𝑢𝑡 𝑒𝑣𝑒𝑟𝑦𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑤𝑖𝑡ℎ 𝑎𝑡 𝑙𝑒𝑎𝑠𝑡 𝑜𝑛𝑒 𝑝𝑒𝑟𝑠𝑜𝑛 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑤𝑎𝑦 𝐼 𝑡𝑎𝑙𝑘 𝑎𝑏𝑜𝑢𝑡 𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑛𝑔𝑠 𝑤𝑖𝑡ℎ 𝑚𝑦𝑠𝑒𝑙𝑓” that is what us needs most.]