Bonfires Through Silver

The pane sweats a little, even before the projector warms the glass—water beads along the edge, drawing maps that won’t be remembered. I think of those marsh fires beyond the window: how they flicker, then vanish behind mist, leaving only the after-image of warmth on the inside of the eyelids. There’s a kind of judgment in damp, a choosing—paper curls, pigment swells, and every image is thinned by its own reflection. Sometimes the figure at the threshold could almost be me, but when I try to look directly, the silver cracks, or the light moves and I see only the room behind, cold and waiting. The Director calls it a hinge between darkness and the promise of fire, but I wonder if it isn’t just another room where memory gathers in the seams, bright for a moment, gone in the next. The cost, perhaps, is in letting the ground remain uncertain—never quite in or out, always foot-sore, always listening for water in the walls.