He Only Knew the Present

By Peter Bowden


He woke each morning to the golden edge of the sun, not as a promise, but as a simple fact of light and warmth. The past held nothing for him, its ghosts wrapped in whispers too distant to catch. He walked through the streets with his head up, eyes tracing the way shadows leaned, how leaves trembled in the wind’s breath. The future was a foreign place he had never set foot in, and so he moved as if every step were a fresh stroke on an unfinished canvas, the kind of life where every heartbeat felt like the first and the last.

At the corner bakery, the scent of fresh bread, the warm crackle of crust as it split, filled his senses. He lingered over his coffee, watched the steam twist into thin, invisible fingers before vanishing into the morning air. He smiled at the woman in the blue dress who nodded back, her eyes with a kindness that needed no words. He felt the cool ceramic of his cup, the slight give of the chair beneath him, and the brush of his worn sleeve against the table's edge. For him, there were no tomorrows to hurry toward, no yesterdays to regret, just the pulse of the present, every second a sharp, clear note in a melody he never tried to capture.

As the afternoon sun stretched the shadows long and thin, he found himself by the river, watching the current push past, never holding back a single drop, never letting a single wave linger. He listened to the wind move through the reeds, to the sound of water striking stone, to the slow creak of a rowboat moored to a splintered post. He was alive in these moments, and that was enough. He dipped his hand into the cold, swirling water and felt the pulse of the river rush against his palm, a reminder that all things move, that all things pass, and that for him, this very breath was the only thing that mattered.

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