What stays keeps time

I often wake before the sound arrives. You always see the smoke before you hear the break, and by then the body has already decided what the day will require of it. Mine is just early now. It learned that habit once, a lifetime ago, when listening mattered more than rest, and it never found a reason to give the lesson back. Some things don’t return to the world when they’re finished with you. They stay on as rhythm, as breath, as a way of being slightly ahead of what’s coming, even when nothing is supposed to be coming at all.

Years have passed—enough that the days move easier now and the names no longer crowd the room—but the night still listens closer than the daylight ever did. I don’t ask it why. The night has earned its quiet. Even when nothing happens, the body still leans forward, as if the world were about to lift its voice. I let it. Some habits are older than choice.

I was not given stories to carry, just a melody to hum. Certain notes no longer fit my mouth, while others linger longer than they should, hanging in the rafters after the fire’s gone down. Time did what time always does—it kept moving—but it did not take everything with it. Some things stayed, not as memory, but as cadence. I do not call this damage, and I do not call it strength. It is simply the way my voice learned its limits, and learned to keep the songs that still sound true—sung low.