©ESR 2026

I remember the shape of her hands more clearly than her face.

Not because she didn’t have one, but because I was never meant to see it. I lived in her hands—in the space between her fingers, in the steady rhythm of her thumb moving bead to bead.

That is where I knew her.

There were patterns to her. Morning light through a window. The same chair. The same quiet posture. Sometimes her hands were steady, deliberate, almost practiced.

Other times, they trembled.

I learned the difference.

I learned when her prayers were habit.

And when they were holding something together.

There were words, of course. Always words. But over time, I came to understand that the words were not the point.

It was the returning.

The repetition.

The way she would begin again, even when nothing seemed to change.

I was there for all of it.

For the ordinary days that required nothing more than routine.

For the heavier ones, when her grip tightened just slightly, when her thumb lingered longer than usual on certain beads, as if something unspoken needed more time.

There were moments she stopped halfway through.

Not because she forgot.

But because she couldn’t continue.

Those were the moments I understood the most.

There were moments she stopped halfway through.

Not because she forgot.

But because she couldn’t continue.

Those were the moments I understood the most.

After she was gone, I was placed in a drawer.

Not abruptly. Not carelessly. Just… set aside.

Folded linens above me. A small box to my left. The faint scent of something once familiar, now fading. The drawer closed, and with it, the rhythm I had come to know.

Time changed after that.

Not in days or nights—I no longer had a way to measure those—but in stillness. In the absence of touch. In the quiet that stretched without interruption.

I was not lost.

But I was no longer held.

There is a difference.

Occasionally, the drawer would open. Light would return for a moment. Hands would move things around me, searching for something else, brushing past me without recognition.

I remained where I had been left.

I do not think it was intentional.

Not everything that is forgotten is abandoned.

Some things are simply… no longer understood.

And yet, something remained unfinished.

Not in the words. The words had been spoken countless times before.

It was in the stopping.

The place where her thumb had rested just a moment too long. The place where breath had caught. Where something unspoken had settled between one bead and the next.

I have carried that moment ever since.

Not as memory.

As weight.

There is a space along my length where the rhythm was interrupted. Where the pattern broke. Where something was meant to continue but did not.

No one else would notice it.

But I do.

I still feel the imprint of that pause.

The hesitation.

The prayer that did not complete itself.

I was made to be moved.

To be counted.

To mark time through repetition and return.

But now I remain still—

holding a place where something once reached toward completion

and never arrived.