Lokey

There’s something restorative about stillness when your body demands it. Two days of sick leave, lungs struggling against both flu and asthma, had taught me the unexpected grace of moving slowly through familiar spaces.

I spent the morning wandering through my own territory—organizing forgotten corners, making the bed with unusual care, finding small victories in movement that didn’t require much breath. The rhythm was gentle, meditative. My room became less like a place I was trapped and more like a sanctuary I was tending.

When restlessness crept in, I turned to distractions, thinking maybe activity would serve where stillness had reached its limit. But my eyes protested, the headache arriving like a reminder that healing doesn’t happen on schedules, not even self-imposed ones.

So I decided to venture out instead, despite my struggling lungs. There’s a park nearby with a large pond at its center—the kind of place I’d walked past countless times but never really noticed. Today, it called to me.

I found a bench facing the water and settled in for what felt like the first genuine rest I’d had in months. The pond stretched out before me, perfectly still, its surface like a mirror reflecting the sky above. The way light danced across the water. The gentle rustle of leaves from trees that lined its edges. The sense that time moved differently here, slower, more forgiving.

The air smelled faintly of damp earth and something green I couldn’t name. A slight breeze carried the distant sound of children playing somewhere beyond the trees.

For a while, I just sat and breathed. Really breathed, deeper than I had in days. My mind began to settle, matching the stillness of the water. The usual noise in my head—the constant churning, the endless loops of worry—all of it started to quiet.

I felt good. Genuinely good, in a way that had nothing to do with productivity or achievement but everything to do with discovering I could still find peace, still access that focused state I’d been working so hard to rebuild. My mind felt like the pond before me: smooth, reflective, undisturbed.

A small movement caught my eye near the water’s edge. Something shifting among the reeds.

Two beautiful kittens emerged from the reeds, their movements graceful and curious as they explored the water’s edge. Something about them tugged at memory—the way they moved, their coloring, the gentle way they approached the water. One of them, in particular, stirred something deep and familiar. A cat I once loved, one that had never truly disappeared but had somehow become unreachable.

I found myself following them, drawn by that familiar ache of recognition. They moved together, sometimes close, sometimes distant, and I couldn’t tell if they were companions or strangers who just happened to share the same path. The uncertainty gnawed at me.

But as I followed, something desperate took hold. Was the familiar one truly my cat? Was it possible that after all this time, we could still find our way back to each other? And what about the other kitten—was it just a companion, or something more threatening to what I still hoped for?

I began studying their every interaction, searching for signs, for proof, for some small confirmation that what I feared wasn’t true. Did they move together because they had to, or because they wanted to? When they touched, was it meaningful or accidental? The questions multiplied faster than I could answer them.

I lost track of time standing there, caught between desperate hope and paralyzing doubt. Every gesture between them felt loaded with significance I couldn’t decode. The longer I watched, the more obsessed I became with understanding the nature of their connection, with finding certainty in a situation that refused to provide it.

The first drops were gentle, barely noticeable against my skin. But the clouds had been gathering while I’d been fixated on ghosts. Soon, the rain began in earnest, sending ripples across the pond’s perfect surface.

I watched as each drop struck the water, creating countless small disturbances that spread outward, colliding with each other, turning the mirror I’d found such peace in into something restless and chaotic. The reflection of sky fractured into a thousand moving pieces, impossible to hold or make sense of.

The kittens, sensing the weather, disappeared into whatever shelter small creatures find. They moved on, indifferent to my presence, indifferent to the hope I’d projected onto them.

I stood alone by the pond that no longer reflected anything but turmoil.

The cat I remembered, the love I’d felt, the connection I’d treasured—it all existed now in this agonizing space of “could be” and “might not be.” The other kitten carried everything I feared but couldn’t prove, everything that threatened what I still desperately wanted to believe.

Clarity dissolved with each raindrop. The reflection I’d been admiring now showed only fractured sky and restless water. Peace revealed itself as something more fragile than I’d wanted to admit.

Professional help, careful habits, deliberate distance from triggers—I thought I’d reached solid ground. But here I was again, reminded how easily the surface could be disturbed.

Two kittens together. Not knowing if they belonged to each other or were just sharing the same space. The not knowing.

It’s strange how quickly you can fall back into familiar depths. How easily the animals you thought you’d moved past can find their way to your quiet places, disturbing the very peace you’ve been protecting. They don’t even have to try—their mere presence is enough to muddy waters you’ve worked so hard to clear.

The irony isn’t lost on me. I was healing. Finding peace in simple moments, mind clear and focused. I was exactly where I wanted to be, feeling exactly how I’d hoped to feel. And in that moment of genuine contentment, uncertainty reached in to remind me that some kinds of pain never really end—they just learn to hide in the spaces between what you know and what you fear.

Maybe that’s the nature of ponds: they look still from a distance, but the slightest disturbance reveals how much movement lives beneath the surface. Maybe the peace I thought I’d found was always more conditional than I wanted to believe.

My clothes clung to my skin, heavy with water and cold that seemed to settle in my bones. Each breath required effort—the dampness, the weight of realization, my lungs already struggling against flu and asthma.

I needed to get home. Before the cold made everything worse, before my body paid the price for this moment of foolish hope. But the real damage wasn’t to my lungs.

The walk home stretched longer than it should have, each step heavy with water and defeat.

Some journeys only lead you further from where you started.