The night opened like a thin wound in the sky. There was no crash; a violet line crossed the darkness and was gone, as if someone had threaded a string through the night and pulled it. From the window I saw it pass and knew, without understanding how, that something had shifted without moving anything visible.
It was not fear that I felt. It was a different kind of fatigue, a cold certainty at the nape of my neck. That could not be ordinary; I was sure there was something more. The city went on with its lights and its usual noises; the cars, the streetlights, the voices that fray. Everything continued as if nothing had happened, but the air grew denser, as if the night were holding a secret it did not want to let go.
I kept watching until the light went out. I turned off the light too. The city continued. I did not. I kept the image of that fleeting fissure like a lightning bolt dividing the sky in a pocket of memory, not yet knowing what door that line of light might open.