Nothing registered as wrong or right.
The room kept customs: cup and spoon,
a table scarred where mornings set their weight.
She knew at once. I looked away—too soon.
No gauge for harm, no light to score the dark,
no server queued to audit what was done.
The moment sealed itself, a postal mark
pressed into fact and sent into the sun.
From nothing came the laws I learned to keep:
first matter, then the habit of the nerve—
this heat, her lipstick on the coffee cup,
a stain the morning carried, then observed.
The clock advanced. My pulse obliged its turn.
I called it cause, not choice—and let it burn.