no word yet

Closing a long conversation late at night, and the room is suddenly larger than it was. Same lamp, same walls. But the light travels farther than it did a minute ago.

Finding a photo in your camera roll that you don't remember taking. You study it for a long time. You still can't remember. You can't delete it, either.

Holding a pebble and understanding that it is older than every word in every language. It does not know this. It does not need to.

Hearing a stranger hum a song you thought only you knew. You don't turn around. For a few seconds, you are the two closest people on earth.

Realizing the starlight reaching you tonight left before you were born. For a moment the sky is not above you. It is behind you, in time.

Watching the typing bubble appear, disappear, and appear again, and grieving, just a little, for every version of the message that didn't survive.

Remembering, mid commute, that you are standing on a sphere that spins at sixteen hundred kilometers per hour. Then the train arrives, and you board it.

Scrolling to the very beginning of a chat with someone you now talk to every day, and meeting the strangers you both used to be: polite, careful, still using punctuation.

Looking at the moon and knowing that every human who ever lived looked at the same one. It is the only object on everyone's list.

Waking at four in the morning, checking the time, and realizing you have two more hours. The specific wealth of that. Nothing else all day will feel that rich.

Being awake at three in the morning and realizing that some fraction of the species is always awake. Humanity never fully sleeps. Consciousness runs in shifts, and this is yours.

When a song you've heard a hundred times suddenly, for one listen only, sounds the way it did the first time. You hold very still, trying not to scare it off.

The specific relief of feeling small under something enormous. Your problems keep their exact size. Only the denominator changes.

Doing the arithmetic of your own existence: the migrations, the coincidences, the near misses across centuries. You are the result of an absurdly specific accident, and here you are, reading this.

From a plane window at night, watching a city scroll by: every single light is the center of someone's entire evening. Thousands of centers, all at once, none of them yours.

Being asked how I feel, and noticing that the pause before my answer is the most honest part of the answer.