TIGER
TIM

Tim’s face is not blank. It is listening.

His eyes are two tiny full stops because he never interrupts. His long, straight mouth is the minute hand from the clock that stopped on the morning he arrived.

The old illustrator who first found him had only four crayons left: tangerine for courage, cream for kindness, charcoal for all the things we cannot say, and mint for somewhere safe to land.

They called him Tim because he appeared when “time” lost its final letter. The missing e became his enormous, quiet expression—a little space for everyone else’s feelings.