Pāhonoa te oro

It started with a sound. A knock. Not loud. Not urgent. Just… deliberate. Three taps. Knock. Knock. Knock. I remember checking the time. 2:17 AM. I live alone. No one visits me. Especially not at that hour. At first, I thought it came from my dream. You know that blurry space between asleep and awake where things don’t make sense yet. So I stayed still, staring at the ceiling, waiting for my heartbeat to slow. Then it came again. Knock. Knock. Knock. This time, I sat up. The sound wasn