Rafi woke before the sun, with the taste of earth packed dry against the roof of his mouth. He lay still, staring up at the ceiling where a spider's thin kingdom drooped from the plaster cracks. If he closed his eyes again, he would see it — the hollow throat of the forest, the wet hush that had once pressed him so deep inside himself he thought he'd never crawl out.
It never stayed gone. Not really.
The room around him was plain: a narrow bed under a frayed blanket, an old dresser that had belonged to someone else before him, and a single window layered in dust from a city that never properly slept. On the wall, a calendar with pages torn halfway off, inked with crossed-out days by hands that could never quite settle.
Sometimes his foster mother would come to the door, soft knock, mug of watered tea in her palm, and ask if he was alright. "You're safe now, Raf. Safe. Do you hear me?" She wanted him to nod, to smile. So he did. He always did. But the word meant nothing. Safety was for children with real mothers, warm dinners, quiet nights. Safety did not live under his skin.
Tonight — or morning, maybe; the streetlights were still on — the city pressed flat against his window. He pushed the blanket aside and swung his feet to the floor, feeling for the creaking board and stepping over it like a ritual. The boards knew his weight too well to betray him now.
In the kitchen, the hum of the old fridge was the only voice. He filled a chipped cup from the tap, rinsed the dirt taste from his mouth, spat brown flecks into the drain. He wondered — not for the first time — if the hush still lived in the cracks of his teeth. If it grew there, waiting to root him down the moment he let himself rest too long.
Outside, the neighborhood dragged itself toward morning. A cat yowled at a distant fence. Tires hissed through a puddle down on Holly Street. Somewhere, a man cussed into the wind, his voice swallowed by the row houses.
Rafi slipped into his sneakers — no socks — and shrugged into the battered hoodie he'd stolen from the camp laundry shed years ago, before the hush had swallowed him whole. It still smelled faintly of smoke and pine resin if he pressed his face into the fabric. Some ghosts cling like that.
He didn't leave a note. She'd find his bed empty by dawn and sigh, maybe worry, maybe not. She knew better than to lock him in. He'd slip out through the window if he had to.
He stepped out into the street. The concrete was split with weeds that grew fat where the city forgot to poison them. His breath rose in soft curls he could almost pretend were mist, or memory, or fog from a forest that did not exist on any map.
He walked. Past the boarded laundromat where boys pitched dice in the dusk. Past the corner store that never closed, with its grimy bulletproof glass and the owner who always watched him like a loose dog. Past the lamp that flickered overhead like a tired eye.
He had no destination except away. Away from the cracked ceiling. Away from the polite "safe now" lies. Away from the noise in his ribs that told him the hush was never dead, only waiting.
In a pocket of the hoodie, his fingers found the old braid of twine he'd carried all this time — the only piece of her that stayed. He thumbed it like a rosary as he walked.
One block bled into another. The city was shrinking behind him, but the hush — the hush was getting louder.
Somewhere, deep down where roots twist around bone, he felt it whisper: Welcome back.
Rafi didn't speak aloud, but the ache at the back of his throat answered for him.
He kept walking anyway.