The sensation does not change when something happens.
It changes when I decide to check whether it might have changed.
I don’t know when this started.
That is the first anomaly.
The cup is on the table.
That should be enough.
But it isn’t.
Because the sentence does not confirm the cup.
It only confirms that someone is writing the sentence.
And I don’t remember starting to write it.
The alarm is still set.
Three minutes early.
That is no longer a detail.
It is a constant.
I begin searching for the origin of those three minutes.
I don’t find it in the alarm.
I find it in the moment I decided to look at it.
I try to remember the cup.
Not the cup itself.
The act of checking it.
But there is no act.
Only a need that exists before memory.
And that need has no shape.
Only effect.
The cup is closer.
I should not be able to say that.
I don’t remember where it was before.
Or I do, but that memory changes every time I inspect it.
And now I no longer know whether the cup moves…
or whether distance depends on being observed.
The neck appears again.
Not as movement.
As verification.
If I move it, something should stabilize.
But it never stabilizes.
Only the criteria of stability change.
I start writing a conclusion.
I delete it.
Not because it is wrong.
But because it was already written before I thought it.
Or after.
Or neither.
The alarm three minutes early.
Always.
Never three minutes late.
I begin to suspect those three minutes do not measure time.
They measure the moment I begin to observe.
The cup is still cold.
That is not the strange part.
The strange part is that I need it to remain cold in order to continue reading this.
And then appears the question that is not a question:
what comes first…
the thing…
or the need to verify it?
I have to move the neck I am not moving it I should…
