Mine to Keep
Recognition is a reflex before it is a choice.
The phone face stays down for the rest of the day. I don’t need confirmation to know the line is drawing tight. Somewhere, she is making rules for herself she will keep until she doesn’t. She is tidying what can be tidied, making order in an apartment that has not changed and never will, not in any way her camera can trap. She is noticing—objects, timings, the small betrayals of a system that was stable yesterday. She will call it paranoia. I refuse the insult. Animals with clean instincts survived; I prefer mine unblunted.