𝙷𝙴 𝙴𝚇𝙸𝚂𝚃𝚂. 𝚑𝚎 𝚌𝚊𝚗𝚗𝚘𝚝 𝚏𝚘𝚛𝚐𝚎𝚝 𝚝𝚑𝚊𝚝 𝚑𝚎 𝚎𝚡𝚒𝚜𝚝𝚜.
before institutes and infestations , eyes and extinctions ; in a time of just martin , his mother , and that lonely space between his efforts to be present and the elsewhere , the anywhere else that she would cast her absent gaze --- he attempts to root himself , to be anchored to reality by virtue of care. he exists only by proxy , in counterpoint , as someone to be asked not where he is , but where he has been.
within the walls of the institute , it feels easier to be seen. as if to exist in ubiquitous defiance of the absence knitted into the ladders of his sweater , when he steps out of the silence of his mother’s stairway , he is a presence denoted by breadcrumb trails of filing errors , cups of tea , too many notes crammed longways into a margin , laughter too loud. oh god please , they spell out , witness me.
to be an annoyance is more bearable than to be unremembered ; the bother a friend more often than the absentee , and to feel eyes warm with amusement roll hot with irritation hurts still nicer than the gooseflesh chill of fear to feel them pass through him , as if perhaps he’d simply ... ceased to be there.
sometimes he feels more that he blinks in and out , perhaps. inhabits some static liminal time beyond the proper rounding numbers of another’s day --- caught somewhere in those hour-moments which stretch between putting down the steaming mug which scalds the softest skin of one’s lips , and the sinking feeling which accompanies a first sip of tea gone lukewarm --- left to wonder where the time went , and what else it could be that they have forgotten.