I don’t know exactly when it started.
I think it was something small.
One page open.
Then another.
Then closing them too quickly, as if someone could see me.
It wasn’t curiosity at first.
Or maybe it was.
But I don’t remember it as clean curiosity.
I remember it as a pressure behind my eyes.
As if something insisted on looking without telling me what it wanted.
The room hasn’t changed much.
But the dust has.
There’s a thin layer on the table that wasn’t there yesterday.
Or it was, and I didn’t notice it.
I can’t decide which option is more disturbing.
I ran my finger across it.
The dust moves, but it doesn’t disappear.
It just rearranges itself.
That makes me think it’s not dirt.
It’s something else.
I don’t know what.
The cup is there.
It’s always there.
I think.
I’m not sure I placed it there.
That’s the first thing that breaks: placement.
Then everything else follows.
Memory doesn’t fail all at once.
It peels off.
Like old paint on a wall.
There are holes in the wall.
Small ones.
Where nails used to be.
I don’t remember what was hanging there.
Only the shape of the absence.
That’s what disturbs me most.
Not what’s missing.
But that the emptiness has a shape.
I tried not to look at the cup too much.
But when I stop looking at it, I feel it changing.
I don’t know if it changes.
Or if it changes when I stop needing it not to change.
That’s worse.
Because then the problem isn’t the cup.
It’s me trying to keep it stable.
I’ve closed the screen several times.
Each time I close it, I check if I really closed it.
I’m not sure when that became the same thing.
Closing.
Checking.
Closing again.
The gesture breaks inside itself.
Today the alarm went off again.
Three minutes early.
That’s no longer a detail.
It’s a rule.
I don’t know of what.
Three minutes before something that never arrives.
Or three minutes before I realise it won’t arrive.
I don’t know which version is worse.
I tried not to think about my neck.
But it doesn’t work like that.
It’s not that I think about it.
It’s that I feel it even when I don’t.
As if the neck is a question the body keeps asking on its own.
If I move it, nothing happens.
But if I don’t, nothing changes either.
The difference is no longer physical.
It’s something else.
I don’t know what.
I wrote a sentence without meaning to:
“I have to move my neck.”
I don’t remember deciding it.
But it’s there.
As if it arrived before intention.
I deleted it.
But it keeps reappearing somewhere else.
Not exactly the same.
But recognisable.
That’s the worst part.
Repetition with small differences.
As if something is learning to write itself through my hand.
Now the cup is slightly closer.
I haven’t moved.
That’s the only certain thing.
I haven’t moved.
But the distance doesn’t match.
Or distance was never a real measurement.
Only a way of calming something.
I don’t know what.
I think I’m starting to understand it.
But every time I think that, something else doesn’t fit.
And I have to check it.
I always have to check it.
I have to move the neck I am not moving it I should…
