The city keeps him awake.
Not with noise,
with glow.
Screens layered over screens,
light stacked into light
until the night forgets itself.
He sits in it willingly,
move pieces across a digital board,
black to white, white to black,
predicting endings
ten steps before they arrive.
Everything here follows rules.
Everything can be won, or lost, or learned.
Outside, the sky is sealed shut.
He says stars don’t come anymore.
She wraps herself in a blanket
that smells like dust and sun,
and slips out to the paddocks
where the world finally exhales.
Grass whispers against itself.
Fences creak like they remember things.
The dark is not empty here,
it watches back.
She lowers herself into it,
curling small against the cold,
like if she takes up less space
it might leave her alone.
But it always finds her.
It settles in slow,
threading through her ribs,
pulling tight in places
no one else can see.
The sky, at least, breaks open for her.
Constellations scatter themselves
ancient and indifferent,
and every so often
something tears loose.
A streak of light,
brief and burning,
gone before it means anything.
She gathers those moments anyways.
Wishes on them,
quick, quiet, desperate,
like pressing her hands
against a door that won’t open.
He studies pattern.
Knows how knights move in L-shapes,
how queens dominate the board,
how every mistake
can be traced back
to a single, careless choice.
He understands pressure,
anticipation,
the slow collapse of a position
you can’t quite save.
But this
this has no board.
No turns.
No rules.
Just the way her voice sometimes thins,
like it’s being pulled somewhere else.
Just the way silence
sits too comfortably on her shoulders.
She lies back further into the grass,
blanket slipping,
cold seeping in unnoticed.
The sky keeps undoing itself above her,
small, beautiful failures
falling out of the dark.
She wishes harder.
Not for things,
not really
just for somewhere else.
He pauses mid game,
cursor hovering,
a move waiting to be made.
For a moment,
he stares past the screen
at nothing,
at everything he can’t name.
He wishes,
not to anything in particular,
just into the dim, electric quiet
that whatever is pulling her under
would let go.