The alarm is still set.
It shouldn’t matter.
But I look at it again.
Three minutes earlier than usual.
That doesn’t fit.
Not yet.
The cup is on the table.
I touch it.
Cold.
I don’t remember placing it there.
But I also don’t remember placing it anywhere else.
And that difference starts to matter.
There is a crack in the wall.
I don’t know if it’s the same one from yesterday.
That doubt comes after I look at it.
Not before.
For a second I think the crack is the strange thing.
Then I realize it isn’t.
It’s the fact that I’m using it to confirm other things.
Things I don’t know how to name yet.
I start suspecting something uncomfortable.
It’s not that objects change.
It’s that I arrive after the change.
And still behave as if I had seen it happen.
I need to move my neck.
I think it.
I wait.
Nothing.
The sensation arrives late.
As always.
But this time it doesn’t fit.
It’s not an order.
It’s not an intention.
It’s something in between.
For a second I think I’m seeing the pattern.
Then it disappears.
Not the thought.
The place where the pattern was.
The cup is still cold.
The alarm is still set.
The crack is still there.
Or I think it is.
I’m no longer sure what “there” means.
I start thinking there is a point before the decision.
Not before the action.
Before the idea of action.
And for a moment I realize something I shouldn’t write.
It’s not that I am making decisions.
It’s that I appear after they are made.
The crack no longer feels like an object.
It feels like evidence.
But I don’t know of what.
I need to move my neck.
But this time the sensation arrives first.
And the movement doesn’t.
And I find myself waiting to know whether that means I was the one who did it this time.
I have to move the neck I am not moving it I should…
