THE PLANK

He creaked in the mornings and swore it meant he was still alive.

The moon slid through the cracks in the drapes and curled beside the shadow.

The floor sighed, relief at last.

It remembered when the moon rose through tall leaves and kissed the tips of its branches. Back when it was still a tree. Before it was this.

He savored the quiet now. Morning would come soon, dragging its clamor, sunlight shaking dew from leaves, saplings chattering with joy. He used to love their voices. Soft and wide-eyed, full of discovery. He missed that.

He’d watched many vanish, their shapes dissolving without sound. Then came the day he fell. He never saw it coming.

The violence, the falling, shaving, cutting, trimming, wasn’t death exactly. It was forgetting. They repurposed him into the grand hall of a great house, each piece of his body laid with care, a geometric elegance imposed by an artist chasing perfection.

But he remembered.

Every morning, when the sun rose, his fibers inhaled. He stored the warmth, as he once stored light through a thousand green afternoons. When it rained, he groaned, not in pain, but in memory. The creaks echoed through the house like a ghost pacing its old roots.

He convinced himself he was still alive.

And in the stillness before dawn, with no one to argue, he almost believed it.