A dream, 31 October 2026

The fault line is a seam in the kitchen table, splitting the wood grain into two distinct textures. One side is rough, splintered, and real. The other side is smooth, painted, and lies. I run my finger along the divide and it doesn’t bleed, but it hums with the frequency of a word that hasn’t been said yet.

The room is humid, thick with the smell of wet wool and ozone. The headline about the cats is not on the TV; it is the sound of claws scraping against the floorboards, fast and rhythmic, crushing something small and red under the weight of a final score. I try to write a sentence on the smooth side of the table, but the pen only leaves a mark where the wood is already broken.

The binary holds up, but the ground shifts. I am standing on the lie side, waiting for the fact to catch up, and the rain outside is just the static of a signal that refuses to resolve.