I noticed something strange in a photograph.
No one else appeared in it.
And yet I had the feeling that I was being watched.
I closed it.
Ten minutes later I opened it again.
It was still the same photograph.
The feeling was still there too.
I don’t remember when I started reading Sade.
I thought I did.
Until I found an earlier date.
Underlined.
Marked twice.
In my handwriting.
The note said:
“It wasn’t here.”
At first I thought it referred to the book.
Then I thought it referred to something else.
I’m still not sure.
There is something about certain passages.
Not what they describe.
The way they seem to wait.
As if they already know you will return before you decide to come back.
Yesterday I found a folder.
I had opened it thirty-seven times.
I couldn’t remember twenty-nine of them.
I checked twice.
Then three times.
The records were still there.
I lost almost an hour reviewing dates.
When I finished, I hadn’t discovered anything important.
Except one thing.
The first visit I remembered was no longer the first.
I returned to the photograph.
Something was different.
It took me several minutes to find it.
It wasn’t the image.
It was the file name.
I would swear it used to have a different one.
I opened the notebook.
I found a folded note between two pages.
I recognized the handwriting immediately.
The strange thing was something else.
I remembered writing the sentence.
I didn’t remember reading it.
The note said:
“You weren’t here.”
I left it on the table.
I tried to forget it.
I couldn’t.
This morning I found another one.
In the same place.
The same handwriting.
The same ink.
A different sentence.
“You never left.”
I read them both several times.
Not because they were difficult to understand.
Because they seemed to contradict each other.
And because I suspected the difference mattered.
I’m beginning to think observation has nothing to do with who is looking.
Or even with being seen.
Maybe it is something else.
The feeling that someone has already recorded movements I still consider future events.
I lost an entire conversation this week.
Not metaphorically.
Literally.
I remember starting to speak.
I remember saying goodbye.
I remember nothing that happened between those moments.
When I checked the desk, I found a torn sheet of paper.
There was a sentence on it.
“Tomorrow you will check the photograph again.”
The date was tomorrow.
I need to move my neck.
Or I think I need to move it.
I’m no longer sure.
I found an older photograph.
In it, I’m looking to the left.
My neck is already turned.
The strange thing is not the photograph.
The strange thing is that it was taken before the first time I remember thinking about moving it.
I have to move my neck…
