Stories

I always woke up before the alarm. I didn’t need the chime. The light from my small window always crept in around 5:30, washing the walls with a soft gray before the world made noise. At twenty-two, I’d become used to getting up early—not because I loved mornings, but because I was afraid of being late. And being late meant being wrong. Being wrong meant being a disappointment. That feeling haunted me more than any nightmare. My apartment was nothing special—just two rooms and a bathroom, with a leaky faucet and walls thin enough to hear my neighbor’s late-night guitar. But it was mine. I paid the rent. I cleaned the windows. I called it home. I studied Fine Arts at the local university. Sometimes I wondered whether I had chosen it freely or if it was just the only thing I was good at. My father, a carpenter, never quite understood what I did. “You draw faces, right?” he would say. “Maybe draw mine one day.” But I never did. I was afraid I wouldn’t do it justice. That morni...