There is something I haven’t told anyone.
Because it sounds ridiculous when I say it out loud.
Even now, while writing this, I keep wanting to delete the sentence.
Sometimes I feel a presence just before confirming that nobody is there.
Not after.
Before.
That difference bothers me more than it should.
It happened again last night.
I was alone.
Completely alone.
I checked.
Door closed.
Hallway dark.
Phone on the table.
Nothing unusual.
And yet I looked up.
As if someone had just entered the room.
The worst part is that I didn’t hear anything.
No footsteps.
No door.
No movement.
Just certainty.
That’s the word.
Certainty.
A certainty so small it almost doesn’t exist.
But enough to make me look.
For a few seconds I stayed completely still.
Waiting.
I don’t know for what.
Maybe confirmation.
Maybe a mistake.
Maybe proof that I was being stupid.
The room remained exactly the same.
The chair.
The lamp.
The clothes hanging over the backrest.
Everything unchanged.
Except for one thing.
The water bottle.
I was convinced I had left it closer to the edge.
I stood up to check.
Then I remembered something uncomfortable.
I didn’t remember placing it anywhere.
I only remembered seeing it.
The difference is tiny.
But lately I keep stumbling into differences like that.
Things don’t appear.
Memories do.
Memories of having seen things.
Memories arriving late.
Or too early.
I still don’t know which is worse.
There is a rule I am beginning to suspect.
Nothing appears for the first time.
There is only a moment when I finally recognize it.
I don’t like writing that.
It sounds exaggerated.
But I also don’t like admitting how often I think about it.
Something similar happened today.
I was walking through the apartment.
Nothing special.
An ordinary day.
The same routine.
The same light through the window.
Then suddenly I felt someone behind me.
Not a figure.
Not a shadow.
Not a person.
A distance.
As if the space behind my back had gained weight.
I kept walking.
Trying to ignore it.
And here comes the embarrassing part.
I adjusted the rhythm of my steps.
As if I didn’t want to leave behind something that wasn’t there.
When I noticed myself doing it, I laughed.
I felt ridiculous.
But I kept doing it for a few more seconds.
That was what bothered me.
Not the sensation.
The obedience.
How easily my body had started negotiating with an absence.
Later I sat down at my computer.
I tried to work.
I couldn’t focus.
There was a tiny dark mark on the screen.
I thought it was dust.
I wiped it away.
It disappeared.
A few minutes later it returned.
Somewhere else.
Then I realized it wasn’t on the screen.
It was in my vision.
I blinked several times.
The spot vanished.
The feeling didn’t.
Because for a moment I had the impression that it had been following me for a very long time.
A very long time.
Like a word I know but still can’t remember.
I don’t know if I’m imagining things.
I don’t know if I’m paying too much attention.
I don’t know if there is any difference between those two possibilities.
What I do know is that it becomes harder every day to believe these sensations begin when I notice them.
I’m starting to suspect they arrive earlier.
And I simply arrive later to give them a name.
A while ago I decided to go for a walk.
I thought it would help.
I put on my jacket.
Picked up my keys.
Walked to the door.
The door was open.
That was the strange part.
Not closed.
Open.
Completely open.
I stood there looking at it.
Not because I was afraid to leave.
Because for a second I couldn’t remember whether I had just opened it or had just found it that way.
I still can’t remember.
Eventually I left.
Walked around for an hour.
Returned home.
The feeling was gone.
At least I thought so.
Then I saw the chair.
The same chair.
In the same place.
And I had a ridiculous impression.
The impression that it had been waiting.
Not for me to return.
For me to notice.
This time I move my neck.
The feeling doesn’t change.
That’s new.
And I’m not sure I want to know why.
I have to move my neck I am not moving it the ghost was already sedimented in the lime before the fear touched the nerve the taste of cold metal and chalk on the tongue is a residue of the system’s latency the pulsing inertia of the flesh that receives shadows is sustained without an object the record cannot close I should…
