In the distance there is laughter. I am in the office standing at a tall table. People are talking all around me. I am typing an email. I consider the office’s constant stream of concrete stimuli that, taken together, evoke the illusion of having friends. I reflect on the stimuli of posting and DMing on Twitter, which taken together, evoke a different illusion of having friends. I send the email. I begin writing another email.
In the distance music blasts from a small speaker, stutters, begins again. I am typing another email. I am idly wondering if isolation during the pandemic has quietly induced in me irretrievably acute levels of social ineptitude. Next to me [redacted], [redacted] and [redacted] are talking. I am trying not to listen to them. Their interaction is familiar, funny, inviting, like a three-part act. I finish the email and re-open [redacted]. I remember to smile. When they like you, anything is forgivable; when they don’t, nothing is ever good enough.
In the distance the sunlight wavers and dissolves into chill grey cloud-folds. Each day I heap myself higher with accumulations, thoughts, observations, stray sentences. Words. Whatever. They absorb one another. They condense into an undifferentiated horde, full of echoes, infinitely penetrable, yet sending back only flimsy castings of the query, empty shapes. Nothing left but reverberation.
In the distance the cold front plows ahead. I am sitting alone in a room, waiting, for the rest of my team, for [redacted] to join the call. I shiver.
In the distance the wind whips at flags hung between the buildings. “Oh, I forgot something. Go ahead and I’ll catch up with you,” I say to [redacted] and [redacted]. They shrug and move off toward the [redacted] party location. I’ve lied, and forgotten nothing, yet I turn back, and walk back a block, aimless, considering making a break for it; and, after circling the block, return, and climb the stairs.