I closed the door.
Then I checked that it was closed again.
Not because I doubted it.
Because I couldn’t remember closing it.
The room looked the same.
The table.
The chair.
The glass of water.
And yet something was different.
It took me several minutes to figure out what it was.
The clock.
It was still running.
But I was convinced it had stopped.
I opened the notebook.
I found an entry.
I don’t remember writing it.
Only one sentence:
“Don’t start counting the days.”
The date was months old.
I tried to remember why I had written it.
I couldn’t.
The strange thing is that I understood exactly what it meant.
I read for a while.
Then I stood up.
Took two steps.
Sat down again.
I hadn’t forgotten anything.
I didn’t need anything.
I simply felt that I still couldn’t leave.
Sade writes about isolation again and again.
But I am starting to suspect that solitude wasn’t what interested him.
It was something else.
The moment when you stop distinguishing between being alone…
and monitoring the fact that you are alone.
I looked at the window.
Then I looked at it again.
The second time I found something.
A mark on the glass.
A tiny line.
As if someone had pointed to a specific spot.
Behind it I found another note.
The handwriting looked like mine.
It said:
“You already looked here.”
I stared at it for several minutes.
Not because I doubted the handwriting.
Because I didn’t remember finding that mark before.
And the note seemed to assume that I had.
The room was still silent.
The silence was still the same.
I was no longer sure.
I need to move my neck.
I think I’ve been thinking about moving it for a while.
I found a note in the margin of the last page.
Only four words.
“You already moved it before.”
I don’t remember writing that.
The strange thing is not that I’m trying to find out whether it’s true.
The strange thing is that I’m still trying to remember when it started to feel normal to find these notes.
I have to move my neck I am not moving it…
