My prior is embarrassingly sunny (≈0.82). She likes me. I have evidence: yesterday’s laugh, the easy way the hours slip as we talk, the kiss emoji.
Now: a small famine. Three dots rise, drown. Refresh. Refresh. (I know.) Refresh.
I negotiate with the clock like it’s a customs agent. If it hits :17 with nothing, I will simply breathe. Okay, :19. (:23 is basically the same as :19.) Fine, top of the hour, then I become a monastery.
I minimize Discord, open a spreadsheet, pretend to be interested in different pricing models based on intellectual property rights; alt-tab back because Excel has no anesthetic properties. Force close Discord. Restart it. Just making sure there wasn’t something wrong with it, some strange glitch, that happens sometimes? I tell myself?
A rectangle blooms in the lower right, gray with rounded corners. The sound is the exact pitch of hope. Calendar icon. Standup in ten. Hope evaporates on contact like alcohol on skin, forgotten almost as quickly as it scared me.
I tell myself: her absence is not a verdict, it’s a scheduling artifact, a back room with no bars, only the usual physics: meetings, red lights, soup, dogs need walked with both hands, one on the leash and the other for poop bags. (I adjust the likelihood function upward for soup, downward for poop.)
I rehearse not-messages I’ll never send: “lol nvm,” “no pressure,” “ignore me I’m just a satellite ping.” Add a smiley, delete the smiley, add a different smiley, delete the entire concept of smileys. Delete, delete. My restraint has its own caffeine.
The limbic accountant runs the numbers badly but fast: P(she doesn’t like me anymore | no reply at :32) spikes, then crashes, a high-frequency trader hallucinating a bear market because a cloud slid over the sun. I open Spotify but then soon hear a notification sound, no wait, actually that’s just the song.
I try being rational in lowercase: people are busy, laptops die, dogs need walking, not every silence is a sentence. Also I do not want to be a person who requires weather reports of affection. I say that and immediately want a seven-day forecast.
I open Reddit. Scroll. Nothing lands. Open Steam. Stare at my library like it’s written in Aramaic. The dishes need doing. I’ll do the dishes. I do not do the dishes. I type “how long is too long for a reply” into Claude and close the tab before he can even respond.
A second gray toast slides in, same corner, same chime family. Windows Security did something it refuses to explain. Heart sprints, sits down, apologizes to my ribs.
The startle dissolves slowly like a sugar cube under an Absinthe fountain. Consider drinking through this. Decide that’s a different poem. Eat yogurt standing at the counter like an adult.
I pledge small vows to the god of sanity: I will not check until the coffee finishes brewing. I will not check. Checking. Okay, but that one was accidental because muscle memory.
I bargain with reality like it’s a bouncer: Look, if she messages before :48 I’ll stop narrating my neurons. If she doesn’t, I will still choose belief, because priors are promises you make to the future. The future raises an eyebrow and writes nothing down.
I actually do the dishes. Load the dishwasher like it’s a Tetris endgame. Consider the gym. Boot up Beat Saber instead. Can’t beat any new songs. Stuck at the same skill level for weeks now. Fail the same pattern three times. Take off the headset, sit down to the laptop, sweaty. Open Discord. Still the same constellation of offline dots.
Outside for a minute, salt nic in my lungs like punctuation. I remind myself: the assumption “she doesn’t like me anymore” is an artifact, a projection, not an x-ray. Still, I hold myself up to the light just in case.
Inside again. A Teams toast flashes in that same lower-right square, gray pill, tiny purple icon. The body misidentifies it as hope, then pretends it never did.
I imagine the notification sliding in, the small ping, the red dot with a number, and the skeleton of me unclenches one finger at a time. I imagine it doesn’t, and nothing breaks; the air remains breathable; my day retains its continents, though I redraw one border with my thumbnail.
Back to Satisfactory. Can’t face the actual factory building, the complex networks of belts and splitters that require actual thought. Instead: jump off cliffs, shoot spiders, let my brain stem handle the controls while the rest of me refreshes Discord. Alt-tab, alt-tab, oh I’m dead again. When did that happen? Close the game.
At :51 I pour coffee and don’t look. At :52 I look anyway and find the same weather, which, statistically, is fine. The world often stays the world.
Top of the hour rolls over like a clean sheet. I let it be that.
I decide to believe on purpose, like flipping a light: today, her silence is a busy street, not a closed door; today, the waiting is proof I want something good.
I open a new terminal, start writing code for the couple’s app that’s supposed to get people talking to each other, but then why wouldn’t I just message her instead? No, why don’t you just work? I don’t. Actually get three functions deep before the gravitational pull wins. Alt-tab. Alt-tab. Pretend my thumb has its own moon.
Another toast at :06, same corner, same rounded gray. Slack this time. Someone renamed a channel. I resent how indistinguishable usability is from intimacy.
I catalogue the provocations I keep misreading: her last message ended with a period, not an emoji; status flickered Idle, then Online, then nothing; Spotify shows an upbeat song I am not inside; she heart-reacted in a group chat where I am not. Each datum is noise. My mammal brain prints it as scripture.
I drink four canned seltzer waters. How many seltzer waters is unhealthy to drink in one day? Is it just water? Drink a fifth one. Draft a message that says nothing. Delete the proof that I needed it.
A birthday reminder slides in, same gray geometry, same small chime. My stomach exits, returns, straightens its tie. The cake icon makes me feel foolish and human in equal measure. Someone I set a reminder for 14 years ago and never deleted. Open Facebook. Start typing “Happy” Close the tab before I can become that person.
I try a new frame: silence is a window that opens onto other streets. The AC’s exhale. The tinnitus that came with the Wellbutrin, same prescription that makes me functional also makes me ring, a bell that never stops. I pretend it’s calming. A siren turning from now into elsewhere. My own pulse rounding a corner and waving like a minor character.
Top of the hour again. The repetition is almost kind. I really have to pee. The five seltzer waters have reached their destination. Stand up, consider it, sit back down, refresh Discord first. Finally go.
I set a rule. If she messages before :12 I will wait one minute before checking it. I fail the rule in advance and admire the honesty.
Google Drive reports a file I do not care about is synced. For half a second I confuse reliability with love. I forgive the confusion. Bodies are fast; evidence is slow.
Laundry. Just throw everything in together at :15, start the washer, the sound filling the condo with its productive white noise, proof I’m functional. Promise myself I won’t check until the cycle’s done. Sit back down at my desk. Check immediately.
Top of the hour once more, a third rollover I did not demand.
I imagine the ping arriving while I’m folding something, red dot with a number blooming, the skeleton unclenching one finger at a time. I imagine it does not and nothing shatters. Air remains breathable. Continents stay put. My borders soften. I dump the clean laundry all in a large box and close the box.
Windows Update lands with confident geometry. Same gray pill. Same family of chimes that all audition as hope. My endocrine system tries to resign. I do not accept the resignation.
I line up truths like clean glasses on a bar: I want to hear from her. Her silence is probably scheduling, not sentiment. Priors exist to stop me from rewriting the world every minute. Bayes will not tuck me in, but he keeps the lights sensible.
Laptop screen to half brightness. I do not immediately brighten it again. Progress often looks like nothing from far away. Up close it looks like a steady cursor.
I open Reddit again. Scroll. Nothing lands. Open Steam. The library is still Aramaic. Open the code again. Add a comment so small it is almost a prayer.
The lower right brightens, small and gray and rounded. The chime is the same as every other chime and somehow not the same. Discord pings. It’s not her. Some friend sharing a meme, asking about weekend plans. But somehow, what the fuck, the spell breaks. Posterior recalibrates toward baseline with indecent speed.
I breathe. I reply like I’m a person. I actually close Discord this time, leave the laptop open, and, experimentally, let the apartment be full of other kinds of messages: coffee’s exhale, dishwasher’s hum, construction next door, my breath finding its way back to automatic, each one saying, in their untexted way: still here, still there.