I opened the same page three times.
The first time I thought I was reading.
The second time I thought I was checking something.
The third time I couldn’t remember what I was looking for.
I only knew that I had come back.
There is a sentence underlined.
I don’t remember marking it.
I see it every time I return.
It always feels new.
It always feels familiar.
Sade writes a great deal about waiting.
Not waiting as an interval.
Waiting as a mechanism.
As if the important event were not the blow.
Nor the command.
Not even the contact.
But the moment before.
That strange instant in which nothing has happened yet and, somehow, the body has already begun to reorganize itself.
I try to remember when I became interested in this.
I find an old screenshot.
The date doesn’t fit.
It is several months earlier than I remembered.
For a few seconds I think I made a mistake.
Then I find another one.
Even older.
The uncomfortable part is not discovering that I have been reading for a long time.
The uncomfortable part is discovering how long I had been reading before I believed I had started.
There is a note inside a book.
I don’t remember writing it.
Only one sentence:
“You are no longer waiting for it to happen.”
Below it, in handwriting that looks like mine:
“You have been waiting to verify it for a long time.”
I read it several times.
Not because I don’t understand it.
Because I don’t know whether it describes the past.
Or the present.
Or something that still hasn’t finished happening.
I need to move my neck.
I think I have been thinking about moving it for several minutes.
The strange thing is not that.
The strange thing is that I am starting to suspect I already moved it.
And that I am going to check again.
I have to move my neck I am not moving it…
