here

I reach out trembling fingertips to feel my every movement through the abandoned house. Any fragment of illumination has been absent for months. It is night. The sky holds a new moon; not even a shadow is cast here.

There is a window open, maybe two. It lets in a slight breeze that feels strangely calming as it passes across my body. I breathe it in as if I am consuming the spirit of lost friend. The tiny hairs on my forearms raise up, standing like green soldiers awaiting inspection. A musty presence of the empty dwelling becomes apparent as a quiet, comfortable smell comes to my welcoming senses and passes into this soul, hesitantly exhaled as if letting go of the only forgiving life force it has known.

There lies no understanding in just how I got here, or how I became upon this moment. But it is good. I recognize a distant familiarity within these walls, but I cannot place it. I belong here somehow. Now.

I take another breath.