At first I thought the problem would be size.
It seems like a reasonable conclusion.
The structure closes.
The available space shrinks.
The body adapts.
End of story.
But that is not how it works.
I learned that during the first hour.
Or the second.
I am not entirely sure.
Time is difficult to measure here because almost nothing changes.
And that is precisely the problem.
The cage remains the same.
Always the same.
I try to move a knee.
The same limit.
I shift my shoulders slightly.
The same limit.
I rest my head at a different angle.
Again, the same limit.
After a while it stops feeling like a structure.
It begins to feel like an answer.
A repeated answer to every physical question the body asks.
No.
No.
No.
No.
The window is covered by an uneven layer of dirt.
I did not notice it at first.
Now I watch it constantly.
There is one section where someone wiped the glass with the palm of a hand a long time ago.
The mark remains.
The rest of the window collected dust again.
That section did not.
I do not know why I keep looking at it.
It is ridiculous.
Yet I return to it over and over.
That happens often here.
Small things.
An insignificant detail.
Then another.
Then another.
As though the mind is trying to manufacture movement where no space remains to find it.
There is a crumpled tissue near the wall.
It does not look recent.
Flattened.
Slightly yellowed.
It has probably been there for weeks.
Perhaps months.
I begin wondering who left it there.
Then I catch myself thinking something stranger.
Why did nobody pick it up?
The thought appears.
Disappears.
Returns half an hour later.
I do not actually care about the tissue.
Yet I keep returning to it.
Just as I keep returning to the window.
Just as I keep returning to the exact distance between my shoulder and the steel.
The structure does not need to do anything.
That is the most uncomfortable discovery.
It does not need to remind me that it exists.
I do that myself.
A faint draft slips through some invisible gap.
I feel it on my neck.
Always the same place.
It is so weak it might be imaginary.
Still, I wait for it.
Every few minutes I check whether it is still there.
As though that tiny current has become an event.
As though the entire world has reduced its scale.
The strange thing is that I do not want to care about these things.
I do not want to think about the glass.
Or the tissue.
Or the air.
Or the distance between my hands and the bars.
Yet I keep doing it.
Attention behaves strangely when it runs out of territory.
It begins settling into anything.
A shadow.
A reflection.
A stain.
A sound.
A crack.
And the smaller the thing seems, the more space it eventually occupies.
A little while ago I noticed a thin line on the floor.
Not a crack.
Just a difference in color within the concrete.
I have spent several minutes looking at it.
I am not entirely sure why.
And perhaps that is the strangest thing of all.
Not that the structure limits movement.
But that, little by little, it begins reorganizing what deserves attention.
The neck I am not moving it the neck has locked I should…
