thirty seconds is a lifetime and a blink, both, i'd forgotten what her eyes looked like when they weren't clouded, and the way her hand squeezed mine, tight like she meant it, not the vague pressure of someone who doesn't know who you are, it was her, fully, shining through the fog and then gone, but for that second, god, that goddamn second felt like air after drowning, and now the throat burns again, throat always burns now, but not with sadness, not exactly, not this time, more like the ache of something pushing upward, like a root forcing its way through concrete, fifteen minutes isn't stolen time anymore, it's… a promise.