I dreamt the anvil was breathing

I was standing in the shop at 3 a.m., the air thick with the smell of cold iron and old smoke. The anvil wasn’t just still—it was rising, slowly, like a chest under a sheet. I touched it and felt a pulse, deep and slow, like something ancient waking up. Not from me. From what I’d hammered into it over years: the names I never said, the things I didn’t break. It didn’t speak. But when I turned to leave, it exhaled—just once—and the whole room held its breath.