I am not moving it.
I should move it.
I could move it.
But before I even check whether I can, something else appears.
He appears.
Not as a complete image.
It never happens that way.
Something worse happens.
A detail appears.
The way he held a cup.
The pause he made before answering a question.
The way he seemed to look at a room for half a second longer than necessary.
Ridiculous details.
Details that should not survive.
Yet they do.
This morning it happened before I was even awake.
During those strange seconds when the day does not exist yet but the dream is already gone.
The thought appeared.
Not a fantasy.
Not a specific memory.
Just the certainty that he was still there.
Waiting.
And I felt that immediate embarrassment.
That unpleasant sensation of discovering that someone occupies space inside your head before you have even opened your eyes.
I tried to think about something else.
It worked for a few minutes.
Then I went to make coffee.
And while waiting for the water to boil, I remembered something he said months ago.
It was not even important.
He probably does not remember it.
But I do.
I remember it far too well.
And the more insignificant the memory is, the more embarrassing it becomes.
Because I cannot justify it.
I cannot explain why it remains.
I cannot explain why it is still here.
Why it keeps appearing.
Why it keeps taking up room.
Later I tried distracting myself by watching a video that had absolutely nothing to do with him.
Another subject.
Another person.
Another world.
And still it happened.
A pause.
A gesture.
A camera angle.
Something insignificant.
And suddenly I was comparing it to him.
Again.
As if my mind had developed the humiliating habit of using him as a unit of measurement for everything.
I try to reason.
I try to leave.
I try to explain to myself that none of this makes sense.
That time should have reduced the problem.
But time never reduces it.
It concentrates it.
Makes it more compact.
More silent.
More difficult to remove.
Sometimes I think about Sade.
Not his excesses.
Not his systems.
But his understanding that certain ideas survive precisely because they are uncomfortable.
Because they create resistance.
Because one part of us wants to expel them while another continues feeding them.
And perhaps that is where the real problem lives.
Not in remembering.
But in returning.
In continuing to find him.
Before waking up.
Before eating.
While waiting for an elevator.
While reading something unrelated.
While listening to a conversation in which his name does not even exist.
The obsession does not feel like a presence.
It feels like contamination.
A silent modification of ordinary processes.
And the more I try to understand it, the less I understand it.
The less I understand it, the more space it occupies.
The more space it occupies, the harder it becomes to admit.
And the harder it becomes to admit, the more embarrassing it is to discover that it is still here.
Still here.
Like a circular mark that should have faded long ago.
Like a trace that is no longer on the skin.
But remains inside attention.
And perhaps that is the worst part.
Not that it remains.
But that some part of me is still waiting to discover whether it ever will stop.
I am not moving it the neck has locked I should…
