The coffee had gone cold.
I couldn’t remember when I stopped drinking it.
I had been staring at the same photograph for several minutes.
Maybe longer.
It wasn’t particularly extreme.
It wasn’t even the most interesting image I had seen that week.
And yet I kept returning to it.
I would close the tab.
Open another one.
Then somehow find my way back.
For a while I called it curiosity.
Later I called it research.
After that I convinced myself I was simply trying to understand something unfamiliar.
Now I’m no longer sure what to call it.
The image showed a pair of hands enclosed inside thick restrictive mitts.
Nothing else.
No chains.
No drama.
Just two hands deprived of the simplest ability in the world: touch.
That was what made me stop.
Not the restraint.
Not the obedience.
The absence of contact.
I found myself imagining ridiculous things.
Trying to pick up a key.
Scratching an itch.
Moving a strand of hair away from the face.
Holding a cup.
Tiny actions that normally disappear beneath awareness.
Why was their absence so fascinating?
I didn’t have an answer.
The monitor illuminated the desk.
Outside, evening was beginning to settle.
The room was quiet.
And yet I had the strange feeling that something was still moving.
Not inside the image.
Inside me.
I kept reading.
Articles.
Forums.
Personal accounts.
The same word appeared again and again.
Surrender.
I didn’t entirely believe it.
It sounded too simple.
Too clean.
Because the more I read, the less it seemed to be about the hands.
And the more it seemed to be about something else.
Something difficult to name.
The possibility of no longer intervening in everything.
The possibility of not having to correct anything.
Not having to reach for anything.
Not having to control anything.
That unsettled me more than I expected.
I closed the screen.
A few minutes later I opened it again.
Not because I had found an answer.
Precisely because I hadn’t.
And maybe that was the problem.
Or the reason.
I still don’t know.
I keep saying it’s only curiosity.
The strange thing is that I no longer know whether I say it to explain it…
or to keep going.
I think about moving my neck.
I wait to notice the exact instant when the movement begins.
But whenever I try to find it, it has already happened.
As if the decision arrived afterward.
As if something had started before me.
I have to move my neck I am not moving it…
