There was a point—I think—where things aligned,
not into truth, but something I could keep,
a quiet architecture of the mind
that held together long enough to sleep,
and did not ask what moved beneath so deep.
But now the pattern interrupts itself,
mid-thought, mid-line, mid-anything I claim;
I reach for something settled on the shelf
and find it slightly altered in its name,
as though recall and error are the same.
It isn’t violent—nothing breaks outright.
The shift is small, persistent, hard to prove;
a sentence rearranging as I write,
a meaning stepping just enough to move,
then vanishing before I can improve.
And there is someone speaking when I think—
not other, not myself, but not quite one;
we overlap at some unstable brink
where what is said and heard cannot be done
without undoing what they’ve just begun.
He says I knew this. Says I chose to stay.
Says there was never anything to miss.
I ask him when it started. He turns to say:
“Say it didn’t. Say there’s nothing prior to this,”
and smiles like something proving what it is.
I try to trace the origin of thought,
to find the first misstep, the earliest seam—
but every point I settle on is caught
inside another version of the scheme,
as if the cause were also what I dream.
The days proceed. I follow them exactly.
They open, close, repeat what they allow.
But something in their order acts abstractly,
as if the then is only shaped by now,
and I agree without remembering how.
I test the world by touch, by weight, by name—
each answer comes, but not the same as asked.
The proof is always almost, never tame;
it passes, but in ways that leave it masked,
as though completion were a thing surpassed.
He laughs again—not loud, but well-placed, near.
Not cruel—just certain I will understand.
“You want a boundary,” he says. “It’s here:
where you decide which version gets to stand.
The rest?”—he shrugs—“they slip beneath your hand.”
But I have felt them. Versions not retained.
Moments that fracture just before they stay.
A thought I know I had, but can’t explain,
except as something taken, moved away,
and placed where I no longer think to say.
Sometimes I hear them moving in the walls—
not sound, but something shaped like what it means,
a pressure where no language ever falls,
a presence threading through the in-betweens,
as if it lives in all I’ve never seen.
If this is clarity, it’s far too thin.
If this is madness, it is far too precise.
It does not shout—it quietly steps in
and reorganizes what would suffice,
until there’s nothing left I’d call concise.
So tell me—no, not you—tell me again:
what holds, what breaks, what separates the two?
Or is the asking just a way to bend
what might have been a single point of view
into this split that neither side can prove?
I keep going. That seems required of me.
Not forward—just continuing the line,
though every step revises where I’ll be,
and every thought redefines what is mine—
and leaves me asking which of us is I, and where is my mind.
Apr 8
Apr 8, 2026 at 11:09 PM UTC
There was a point—I think—where things aligned,
not into truth, but something I could keep,
a quiet architecture of the mind
that held together long enough to sleep,
and did not ask what moved beneath so deep.
But now the pattern interrupts itself,
mid-thought, mid-line, mid-anything I claim;
I reach for something settled on the shelf
and find it slightly altered in its name,
as though recall and error are the same.
It isn’t violent—nothing breaks outright.
The shift is small, persistent, hard to prove;
a sentence rearranging as I write,
a meaning stepping just enough to move,
then vanishing before I can improve.
And there is someone speaking when I think—
not other, not myself, but not quite one;
we overlap at some unstable brink
where what is said and heard cannot be done
without undoing what they’ve just begun.
He says I knew this. Says I chose to stay.
Says there was never anything to miss.
I ask him when it started. He turns to say:
“Say it didn’t. Say there’s nothing prior to this,”
and smiles like something proving what it is.
I try to trace the origin of thought,
to find the first misstep, the earliest seam—
but every point I settle on is caught
inside another version of the scheme,
as if the cause were also what I dream.
The days proceed. I follow them exactly.
They open, close, repeat what they allow.
But something in their order acts abstractly,
as if the then is only shaped by now,
and I agree without remembering how.
I test the world by touch, by weight, by name—
each answer comes, but not the same as asked.
The proof is always almost, never tame;
it passes, but in ways that leave it masked,
as though completion were a thing surpassed.
He laughs again—not loud, but well-placed, near.
Not cruel—just certain I will understand.
“You want a boundary,” he says. “It’s here:
where you decide which version gets to stand.
The rest?”—he shrugs—“they slip beneath your hand.”
But I have felt them. Versions not retained.
Moments that fracture just before they stay.
A thought I know I had, but can’t explain,
except as something taken, moved away,
and placed where I no longer think to say.
Sometimes I hear them moving in the walls—
not sound, but something shaped like what it means,
a pressure where no language ever falls,
a presence threading through the in-betweens,
as if it lives in all I’ve never seen.
If this is clarity, it’s far too thin.
If this is madness, it is far too precise.
It does not shout—it quietly steps in
and reorganizes what would suffice,
until there’s nothing left I’d call concise.
So tell me—no, not you—tell me again:
what holds, what breaks, what separates the two?
Or is the asking just a way to bend
what might have been a single point of view
into this split that neither side can prove?
I keep going. That seems required of me.
Not forward—just continuing the line,
though every step revises where I’ll be,
and every thought redefines what is mine—
and leaves me asking which of us is I, and where is my mind.
Obviously the title is a pixies reference.