It wasn’t a clear sound.
That’s the first thing I should have noticed.
But I heard it twice.
Or I think I did.
The whisper.
It didn’t come from someone.
It came from before someone.
I stayed still without deciding to.
Then I denied it.
Then I returned.
Not to the place.
To the sentence.
To the feeling of having heard it already.
That is what embarrasses me.
Not the content.
The repetition.
The urge to check again.
As if something had changed while I wasn’t looking.
There was no movement in the room.
Only air.
Dust suspended near the bulb.
Too visible.
Too still to ignore.
I found myself listening to silence as if it were an instruction.
No one was speaking.
But I waited for it to appear again.
The whisper.
Or the idea of the whisper.
I don’t know which one is worse.
I’ve started noticing something else.
When I close a file.
I reopen it without remembering why.
When I stop reading.
I return to the same line.
Not to understand.
To confirm.
As if the first reading hadn’t fully happened.
Yesterday it happened with a recording.
A short audio file.
Almost inaudible.
I listened once.
Then again.
Then again.
There was nothing new.
But each repetition seemed to change the weight of what came before.
As if the sound wasn’t in the file.
But in the return.
I’m starting to think I don’t hear things.
I’m starting to think I return to them.
That is not the same thing.
And I don’t know which option unsettles me more.
Because the return doesn’t feel like a decision.
It feels like a correction.
As if I made a mistake by not coming back sooner.
I need to move my neck.
I’m not moving it.
And this time it doesn’t feel like a sentence.
It feels like a verification.
As if the body is checking something I haven’t understood yet.
I have to move my neck…
