In the quiet moments between day and night, when the world holds its breath, a soft sound broke the stillness. A knock. Not the thunderous kind, but gentle—a rhythm against the door, as though the night itself had grown bored of being unnoticed.
“Knock, knock.”
My heart, once lulled by the soft hum of twilight, fluttered awake. Who knocks at such an hour? Still, curiosity tugged me toward the door. I stood, a whisper of apprehension brushing past me, and asked, “Who’s there?”
“Banana.”
I blinked. Banana? A strange visitor to receive in the deep folds of night, but stranger things have happened in the spaces between dreams and wakefulness. Perhaps it was the moon playing tricks. I shook my head and tried again. “Who is it?” I asked, a little more firmly this time.
“Banana,” came the voice, the same cheerful insistence as before. The word lingered, thick in the air like it had weight. There was something odd about the repetition—a joke, surely. Yet, I couldn’t help but feel the stirrings of something deeper beneath the surface, like a riddle I didn’t know I was trying to solve.
Once more, a knock, and this time the air felt different. “Knock, knock,” it came again, quieter now, like a secret shared only between the door and the dark.
I sighed, playing along with the game. “Who’s there?”
“Banana,” the voice replied, patient, persistent. There was a pattern here, a rhythm, but it slipped through my grasp like a half-remembered tune.
For the fourth time, the knock came. “Knock, knock.”
This time, the pause hung longer. It was more than a game now, wasn’t it? A simple riddle transformed into something larger—into waiting. Waiting for something new, something unexpected.
“Who’s there?” I asked, softer now, as though we were both approaching the edge of a long-held breath.
The answer came, surprising me. “Orange.”
A change in the air. Something different at last. My mind stumbled over the sudden shift in tone. Orange… why orange? But before I could ask, the voice continued, light, almost teasing now. “Orange you glad I didn’t say banana?”
And just like that, the world seemed to exhale, and so did I. The tension unraveled into a smile, a quiet laugh. The moment—a joke, a harmless jest—lingered. But somewhere beneath it, like the undercurrent of a song, I thought: Maybe this was how life worked, too. A series of familiar beats, repeated, until something new finally broke through. Something unexpected. Something… worth the wait