The tree line was still in there somewhere, I knew it the way you know a word that won’t come when you call it.
I stood at the back door with my coffee and the fog just sat there, thick and unbothered, covering the field like something that had made up its mind.
No drama. No slow burning off at the edges. Just gray, and the smell of damp leaves, and a crow I could hear but not find.
I wanted it to mean something— the way you want most things to mean something before eight in the morning— but it didn’t cooperate.
It was just fog. The world just taking its time to show itself.
I went inside and refilled my cup and when I looked again an hour later the ridge had returned, quiet and unhurried, like it had never been gone, like patience was the only thing that had ever been required of me.