Echos of Stillness
A Liminal Story
The therapy office is familiar—
but in the same way as a recurring dream or a self portrait from an age past.
This is the place where I look inward.
The room knows better than to try to be the main event.
It’s content to be the setting, not the story.
But today…
As I wait for the session to begin,
a quiet thought rises:
What if the chairs, the lamps, the windowsills took center stage for once?
Let them carry the weight.
Let me become the audience.
“I’ll be there in a minute. Go ahead and start without me,” Dr. H had said.
I laughed.
Did my part in the greeting ritual, the one where we both pretend the session had not already started.
I knew the way and walked down the hall
into the corner office on the sixth floor, downtown.
Now, I hear the city through the window— humming to itself.
But more still than usual.
Still?
Would I call it that?
Why that word?
Maybe it’s because I’ve known some stillness lately…
inside.
I settle into the couch,
and notice—
I’m trusting it to hold me.
It’s a couch I’ve spent more than a few hours on.
Now it’s supporting me?
Why have I never noticed that before?
The question fades even as I ask it, like something knows I’m not able to go to where the answer is. "Withdrawn, your Honor"
The mug.
A mug of coffee sits cooling on the wooden chest.
Distressed wood.
That word—distressed—
sits beside me like a shoe I once wore.
There was a time it fit.
But now?
Above the mug,
steam rises—
dancing like something the coffee is remembering,
or maybe… forgetting.
It makes me think:
When was that stillness I felt?
Days ago? Weeks?
It escapes me.
But my body knows.
I wrap my hands around the mug.
Too warm, and not warm enough.
Like comfort that arrives late.
I lift it.
Sip.
Too sweet.
Like the person who made it doesn’t know me
quite as well as I wish they did.
Or maybe… I haven’t made myself easy to know.
The coffee is too sweet
for the bitterness I sometimes carry in my throat.
But lately,
bitterness has only been a taste—
not me.
I drink it anyway.
The sweetness coats my mouth.
Not holy, but kind.
For a moment,
I remember my voice before it fractured.
Not what it said.
Just the sound of it.
Whole.
“I used to sing,” I say aloud,
surprising myself.
The tune rises—not from my mouth,
but from my chest.
It’s the hum of being.
Not doing.
And it vibrates something loose in me.
I am not crying.
But something beneath my feet
is softer now.
I place the mug back down.
More carefully than I need to—
as if something might shatter.
The steam has faded,
but a shape lingers in the air.
A face?
A name I haven’t wanted to say?
I reach toward it.
My hand moves through fading warmth—
touching nothing.
And yet—
something touches me.
A burden?
A gift?
“Not everything real has a label,” I whisper.
There is no vision.
No miracle.
Maybe not even a burden.
Only breath.
And permission—
not to call myself distressed,
but to listen for my name.
Not strong.
Not brilliant.
Just…
called.
“Are You still here?” I ask.
No answer.
But the couch—
and now even the floor—
holds me like it knows my weight.
Maybe that is the answer.
The lights don’t change. But something in me has.
My eyes are open.
The room, which I once tried to make center stage,
sits where it belongs—
in best supporting role.
The coffee is cold.
The windows glow with the same gray light.
People below go on with their day.
And me?
In this small eddy, where my story recollects itself,
I see that, again, I become both audience and actor.
Fifty minutes have passed and the audience must filter out... one of those exits where the actor is left wondering what the audience thinks, and the audience is left wondering if the actor knows.