Ash and Static

You burn every drawing, and for six weeks, the ward breathes easy. You almost believe it's over.

Then the new patient arrives—comatose, unremarkable—and by morning her hand has mapped those familiar hills. Except the hills are scorched. The tree is gone. The door stands wide open, and nothing waits behind it because whatever waited has already stepped through.

Above her bed, in pencil, too high for sleeping hands to reach: Thank you for letting it out.