She's been awake for twenty minutes, still in bed. Not sleepy, not quite ready. Just at the threshold.
The light through the curtain is that specific Sunday morning light — softer than weekday light, somehow, or just noticed differently. The radiator is making a sound. Outside, nothing.
She is thinking about whether to get up and whether to make coffee first or shower first, and in between these thoughts she is not thinking about anything in particular, which is the real texture of the twenty minutes. Not blank. Not active. Just present in the room.
There's a word for this in German, she remembers, or thinks she remembers — the feeling of not yet but almost. The state between sleep and intention. She can't remember the word. It doesn't matter.
The radiator sound stops.
She reaches for her phone and sees the time: 7:43. Not late. Still time before the day starts claiming her. She puts the phone down.
This is the part she won't remember. The part that doesn't make it into any version of the day she tells later. No one asks: what were you doing at 7:43 on Sunday? No one records: she was at the threshold, thinking about coffee, not thinking, in the light.
But it was real. It had a texture. She was there.
7:44.
She gets up.