reading room
Somewhere
I scroll through the old messages, not to remember but to feel if loss still glows.
Each line is untouched, preserved like frost on glass. You still speak to me there, bright as if the sun never set on us.
The philosophers call it the block universe, everything happening at once, nothing really gone. I think that's what grief becomes: a stillness that shines where affection doesn't fade, it just stops being received.
A-theory says the world keeps moving. But these texts don't. They stay, beating softly inside a server. Sometimes I envy them: their refusal to decay, their peace with permanence.
C-theory tells me even motion is an illusion. Moments are just beads on a string, no before, no after, only position. And I am somewhere between the bead where you laughed and the bead where you left.
If I could unlearn grammar, I'd forget how to say once. I'd forget how to say after. I'd say somewhere and mean: you are still typing and I am still waiting.
— Lilith