The cage feels smaller at night.
I am not entirely sure that it actually is.
During the day I can measure it with my eyes. At night I measure it differently. With my shoulders. With my knees. With the exact distance between a deep breath and the next bar.
At first the metal seems to be the main character.
Later it stops being one.
Other things begin to appear.
A slightly rusted screw near the floor.
A white mark on one of the bars.
The sound of the lock after the room has gone quiet.
The sound lasts less than a second.
Yet it remains much longer.
There is something almost disappointing about discovering that boundaries do not need constant reminders.
They remain where they are even when nobody looks at them.
On a nearby table someone has left a glass of water.
The lower half is covered in condensation.
For several minutes I become convinced the moisture is moving.
I watch it.
It does not move.
Or it moves so slowly that I cannot prove it.
The difference between those two possibilities occupies far more mental space than it should.
That happens often here.
Attention stops obeying reasonable criteria.
A joint.
A reflection on steel.
The sound of a pipe.
The shadow of an object shifting when someone walks through another room.
None of those things should matter.
Yet they do.
Very much.
Sometimes the space feels extraordinarily precise.
As though every centimeter had been calculated by someone obsessive.
At other times it feels improvised.
As though everything had been assembled in a hurry and later forgotten.
Both interpretations survive without bothering each other.
I cannot choose between them.
Perhaps both are true.
Perhaps neither is.
At some point I try to stretch my neck.
Not to escape.
Only to verify something.
I need to move my neck.
I am not moving it.
My neck has locked.
It should…
The sentence never finishes.
Neither does the sensation.
For a few seconds I become convinced I have already moved.
The certainty is absolute.
Then I discover I have not.
The disappointment is absurdly intense.
Almost comical.
The cage remains exactly the same.
The screw remains exactly the same.
The glass remains exactly the same.
And yet something has changed.
Not in the space.
In the scale.
Large things become small.
Small things acquire gravity.
The lock.
The white mark.
The uncertainty about the condensation.
The neck that should move and does not.
Everything is still happening.
It is simply no longer happening at the same size.
I have to move the neck I am not moving it the neck has locked I should…
