It isn’t the strike I remember first.
It is what comes before it.
The hand approaching without touching.
Too slow to be casual.
Too precise to be hesitation.
I find myself waiting for that more than the impact.
And I don’t know when that started happening.
Today I did it again.
I checked the same sensation again.
Not the scene.
The preparation.
As if something happens before it happens.
The room was silent.
Only a kind of charged air.
I don’t know how to describe it without exaggerating.
Dust floating as if it had direction.
As if responding to something I couldn’t see.
I looked at my own hand.
Without moving it.
Without instructing it.
Just checking whether it was still mine before the gesture.
That is the strange part.
The need to check.
Always check.
Before thought.
Before decision.
Sometimes I close my eyes and still feel the moment before.
Not the contact.
The expectation of contact.
I’ve started noticing something else.
Small repetitions.
Almost absurd.
Adjusting my posture twice.
Reading the same line without reason.
Reopening a file I had already closed.
Not by mistake.
By correction.
As if something didn’t fully register the first time.
Yesterday I found an old note.
A single sentence.
I didn’t remember writing it.
I read it once.
Then again.
It didn’t change.
But I did.
Or it felt that way.
I stayed in the room for several minutes without moving.
Listening to silence as if it were instruction.
There was no instruction.
Only the sense that something hadn’t finished happening yet.
I’m beginning to suspect I’m not experiencing events.
I’m reviewing their edge.
Their preparation.
Their threshold.
And that is what traps me.
Not the act.
But the moment where it can still be anything.
I need to move my neck.
I’m not moving it.
And this time it isn’t a sentence.
It is a prior check.
As if the body is waiting for contact before admitting it.
I have to move my neck I am not moving it…
