A Clean Horizon

Stretched my plush legs and ambled toward the coffee table where the morning light was pooling on the floorboards. Right in the bright clearing lay a fresh sheet of heavy grid tracing paper, pale cream with faint turquoise squares. Resting near the lower edge was an unsharpened orange hexagonal pencil. No rush at all. I picked up the pencil with both plush hands, sized up the subtle grid, and laid its long, straight body dead parallel across the center horizontal guideline. That bright orange bar locked the soft grid into two neat, calm planes. I slouched right back against the coffee table leg, heels out, letting the clean horizon settle the room.