A Record of Small Failures

The air is sixty-nine degrees. For a man living in the quiet aftermath of a hospital visit, this is the only fact that matters. In a house that has become a sealed container of memory and routine, he measures his days in degrees of temperature, meaningless numbers, and the small, persistent failures of a world coming undone: the toast that is never brown enough, the buzz from a wire inside a wall, the gray comma of a grease stain on a plate that will not wash clean. This is not a story of recovery. It is the record of a mind trying to survive a thought a fractured account of love, aging, and the sensory details that become anchors when the grand narratives have failed. It is a life measured in the hum of the refrigerator and the silence that follows a question.