There is something that has started to worry me.
Not because it is dramatic.
Precisely because it is not.
Because it happens during moments that should belong to me.
Moments that used to be invisible.
This morning I spent several minutes lying in bed before getting up.
I was not tired.
I was not thinking about anything important.
I was simply looking at a wrinkle in the sheet.
A completely ordinary wrinkle.
And somehow he appeared.
I never know how it happens.
The mind seems to find routes I never give it.
Secondary roads.
Hidden corridors.
Shortcuts that always arrive at the same destination.
I started wondering how he would have straightened that wrinkle.
Then I wondered why I was thinking that.
Then I wondered why I was thinking about thinking that.
And suddenly I was no longer looking at the sheet.
I was trapped.
Again.
The worst part is that it no longer happens during important events.
It happens during ridiculous ones.
While waiting for water to boil.
While choosing a shirt.
While unlocking my phone to check a notification that means absolutely nothing.
Especially the notifications that mean nothing.
I open them.
I read them.
There is nothing there.
And yet I feel disappointed.
A strange disappointment.
A disappointment that makes no sense.
As if I had expected something else.
A sign.
A correction.
An observation.
Anything.
I close the phone.
Put it away.
And realize I am still waiting.
That is what is beginning to frighten me.
The waiting.
Because it no longer feels like an action.
It feels like a physical condition.
Like hunger.
Like sleep.
Like thirst.
Today during lunch a coworker was telling me about a television series he has been watching.
I remember absurdly precise details.
A coffee stain near his thumb.
A shirt button fastened incorrectly.
A woman crossing the street behind him carrying a yellow shopping bag.
A bus braking too hard.
I remember all of that.
But I remember almost nothing of what he was saying.
Because at some point the absence arrived.
And when the absence arrives everything else loses resolution.
Voices continue.
People continue moving.
The world continues functioning.
But something shifts.
As though a transparent layer descends across reality.
And behind that layer is him.
Not present.
Worse.
Absent.
Some days I tell myself that I simply miss him.
But that explanation no longer convinces me.
Missing someone should resemble sadness.
This does not resemble sadness.
Sadness has shape.
Boundaries.
A recognizable cause.
This is something else.
A silent disturbance.
A misalignment.
The sensation that something inside reality has moved a few millimeters out of place.
The more I try to describe it the less I understand it.
And the less I understand it the more space it occupies.
And the more space it occupies the more ashamed I become.
Because I keep discovering how thoroughly it has contaminated things that have nothing to do with him.
A cup.
A doorway.
A reflection in a window.
The sound of water falling in the shower.
The wait at a traffic light.
None of these things belong to him.
Yet all of them eventually lead back to him.
Sometimes I wonder when it began.
I cannot find the answer.
Only traces.
Small residues.
Like an old circular mark that has nearly faded but still becomes visible under a certain angle of light.
And perhaps that is the worst part.
Not the intensity.
The permanence.
Intensity rises and falls.
Permanence remains.
It remains while I work.
It remains while I laugh.
It remains while I am distracted.
It remains during the few seconds when I manage to forget.
And it is waiting for me exactly where I left it.
As though it never moved at all.
As though I am the one who walks away for a moment only to discover that no real distance exists.
I am not moving it the neck has locked I should…
