Veil of Unknowing

I remember a pane of glass, half-misted, propped against a boarded window in an estate I was never meant to enter. The night air pressed through, tasting faintly metallic, green as old coins. My hands—always uncertain—grew clouded in the reflection, fingertips blurring into condensation. In these rooms, I learned that clarity is a kind of trespass. Sometimes the marsh water rose so high, the prints would buckle and bloom in reverse, image turning against itself. Have you noticed how silhouettes behind glass at night seem to carry secrets, not just distance? Sometimes I think we are only recognizable in the thin moment before the water closes back in. There are days when the moths gather in grids, flickering—each a pulse of life that only exists beyond the next pane. This cost me a sleep or two—maybe more—a kind of small erosion, quiet but insistent, as if the image itself was waiting for me to wade just a little further, unshod and unsure, into the dark.