The Spark

He used to wake before dawn, not because he wanted to, but because the noise in his chest refused to sleep.

The hum of the city pressed against the windows, and somewhere beneath that hum, a smaller sound flickered — a question without words.

One morning he stopped turning away from it.

He stood at the sink, hands in cold water, and felt something shift: a thin thread pulling him toward the edge of everything familiar.

It wasn't courage, not yet — just the first tremor of wanting to breathe again.

The spark was not light but absence — the space cleared when the old life burned.

He didn't know it would lead to the sea, or that the sea would take so much.

He only knew the silence that followed was wider than fear, and in that silence, something ancient began to stir.

Every journey begins like this — not with a map, but with a fracture.

A man breaks, a tide rises, and the world turns, waiting for him to move.