By morning the fog has thinned to tatters and then to nothing.
Light arrives without drama, laying a hard, clean edge along the roofs and the wet pavement.
The street lamps stand revealed as ordinary poles, their glass unclouded and faintly dusty.
Where a figure seemed to wait in the blur, there is only a litter bin beside a leaning sign, both perfectly still in the sun.
Windows open. A van door slams. Someone coughs and laughs.
Everything is sharply itself again, accountable and named.
Yet I pause at the corner, looking at the place where the shape had been. In this clarity it feels foolish to hesitate — and stranger still that part of me does.