It comes the way most things do in this life: quietly, almost unnoticed, slipping in beside the routines already in motion. The same coffee mug waits on the counter. The same kitchen light hums on before the house stirs. The same life continues, intact and unfolding, even as the calendar insists we call it something different.

This is not the pause at the end of the season, the exhale that comes when everything is over. It is the breath taken while standing in the doorway, hands finally still, before stepping back into the noise and movement of what is to come. It is the quiet recognition that nothing more can be added without asking something back in return, and that continuing to press forward will not necessarily make what follows more meaningful—only more exhausting.