I do not remember when I started looking at the light.
I remember something worse.
I remember deciding not to look at it.
The difference seems small.
It isn’t.
The light enters through the window of the chalk room and falls across the table.
Nothing unusual.
A white strip.
Dust suspended in the air.
A cup.
A circular mark left by something no longer there.
I notice it while reading.
A few minutes later I notice it again.
Then something feels wrong.
The mark seems slightly larger.
Not much.
Just enough to make me think I am mistaken.
I move closer.
I study it.
It doesn’t change.
I take a photograph.
Only to stop thinking about it.
I keep reading.
I try to focus on something else.
It doesn’t work.
The mark remains.
Not as an image.
As a question.
Why do I remember it being smaller?
I look back at the photograph.
The mark is exactly the same size.
That should reassure me.
It doesn’t.
Because now I am no longer sure the mark is the problem.
Maybe the problem is remembering it differently.
There is a rule I do not remember learning:
the first version of something never disappears completely.
Even when it was wrong.
Even when it never existed.
The light keeps moving across the table.
Very slowly.
I watch it for too long.
Then something happens that I did not expect.
For the first time, my attention does not arrive late.
It arrives too early.
My body has already corrected the position of the chair before I notice that the light has moved.
That makes me stop.
Not because I am afraid.
Because I recognize something.
I do not know what.
Only the feeling of having passed through this adjustment before.
As if I were remembering a habit that does not belong to me.
The light reaches the circular mark.
For a moment they seem to become the same thing.
Then I see the anomaly.
Not on the table.
In the photograph.
The image is still open on my phone.
The mark is there.
The light is there too.
But the light does not touch the mark.
In the photograph it remains a few centimeters behind.
I look at the table.
I look at the screen.
I look at the table again.
It is not a large difference.
It is worse.
It is a small difference.
Small enough to survive every explanation.
Precise enough to remain.
I keep comparing both images.
I do not know for how long.
I begin adjusting my posture to see more clearly.
Then I adjust the distance.
Then I adjust the angle of the phone.
Then I adjust my breathing.
Only then do I realize something.
I have spent several minutes obeying a discrepancy.
The photograph proves nothing.
The table proves nothing.
And yet I continue.
As if one of the two versions were trying to be recognized.
Not corrected.
Recognized.
The light finally crosses the mark.
Nothing happens.
The room remains the same.
The cup remains where it was.
The door remains open.
That is what concerns me.
Because the difference remains.
Small.
Useless.
Impossible to justify.
I look at the photograph again.
For a second I have the impression that I did not take it today.
I cannot find any evidence.
Only the feeling.
The same feeling that appears when a sentence seems to describe me before I understand it.
I place the phone back on the table.
The screen goes dark.
The mark disappears.
The light remains.
And for a moment I am not sure which of the two things I was really observing.
I have to move my neck…
