The week the clocks go back, the light curdles.

The week the clocks go back, the light curdles. It stays in the same place for too long. The sun hangs like a bruised fruit against the gray siding of the neighbor’s garage, refusing to set.

In the kitchen, a loaf of bread sits on the counter. The crust is hard enough to scrape a fingernail. A smear of butter remains in the dish—yellow fat, oxidized and waxy at the edges. No one has moved it. The table is a landscape of stalled labor: a chipped mug with a ring of brown residue, a pile of mail weighed down by a heavy glass paperweight.

The air smells of damp wool and cold grease. It is the smell of furniture settling into its own rot.

Outside, a neighbor pulls a tarp over a bicycle. The plastic crinkles—a sharp, dry sound in the heavy air. Inside, the radiator hums, a low vibration that travels through the floorboards into the soles of bare feet. Dust motes hang suspended in the orange glow of a single lamp. They do not move. They wait for the hour to fold over itself, a redundant gain of time that feels like an accumulation of sediment.

A hand reaches out and touches the bread crust. It leaves a faint indentation in the dry surface, a small, permanent hollow. The house holds its breath.