Undone

She wakes before her alarm, light already leaning against the curtain. The apartment is quiet in the clean, commercial way of weekday mornings—everything possible, nothing demanded. She lies still until the warmth against her shoulder tells her the sun has reached the window.

In the kitchen she watches the window hold two worlds at once: her faint reflection and the courtyard beyond it, where someone crosses with a bag and a dog pauses to sniff a railing. She thinks how strange it is that so much life is visible from here and none of it will touch her unless she opens the door.

Her phone blinks once, twice—small urgencies pretending to be emergencies. She ignores them and drinks her coffee standing, watching steam thin above the rim. For a moment she remembers hands on her hips at a party, the casual claim of it; then she lets the memory thin until it is only heat and no one’s name.

When she finishes the cup, she sets it down as if the smallest sound could break the mood the room has made. The photographer’s message is still unanswered in her mind, not on the screen—proof of a choice she has been circling. She is aware of the wanting before she decides what to do about it.