Her passport was a liar. It insisted, with all the ponderous authority of official ink, that Irina M.'s middle initial was for Maria. But in the pleated town by the crumpled sea, where she resided with her glorious and frequent confusions, everyone knew it stood for Mmmm. It was the sound of her soul, a hummingbird's burr, a language of its own. A rising inflection for bewilderment (Mmmm?), a falling one for resignation (...

You do not have to call it grace, Nor point to every broken place. There’s silence deep where waters flow, And songs the bones still somehow know. Leaf-shadow falls where salt winds sigh, And wings are hushed before they fly. Behind your ribs, a shape stays still— It listens with a waiting will. It longs not for a slammed-back door, But quiet that’s not threat or war. And then it sparks—the old regret, A match to memories...

She rented the house for six weeks. It was small, just one bedroom and a screen porch, with ceiling fans that wobbled when they turned. There was a beach a few minutes’ walk away, but she rarely went. She preferred the quiet of the mornings — the hum of insects, the slow warming of the air, the way the early light filtered softly through the house’s porch screens, pale and golden, casting a mesh of shadow across the floor...