Epektasis

I keep skipping the video
like a street I learned to avoid—
same corner, same light,
nothing new waiting there
except the fact it still exists.

A boy. A girl.
Small enough that their ages feel like guesses.
They sit with their mother
on ground that will not give.
Rain needles down.
The earth stays the color of bone.

There is a fire.
Calling it that feels generous.
Wet wood clutched together,
a flame no bigger than a lie
I tell myself.

They shake.
Not dramatically.
The kind of shaking that looks practiced.
As if the body has already learned
what it can’t expect.

I watch long enough
to feel implicated,
not long enough to feel responsible.

Later, at work,
there is a heater under my desk.
Cheap plastic.
It hums without asking permission.
Heat spills out
like it has nowhere better to be.

I put my hands there.
I do not think of them at first.
I think about emails.
About time.

Then the shaking returns—
not faces,
not rain,
just cold
deciding to stay.

I imagine taking the heater home.
Then I stop.
Because imagination is easy
and extension cords are not.

There are places where wires end.
Places where heat is a rumor,
where now is the only tense
and it repeats.

I eat lunch.
I scroll.
I read part of an article.
I feel bad in a way that fits neatly
between appointments.

The heater keeps humming.
I let it.
I like that it obeys.

Somewhere, a mother presses her children
against her ribs
as if closeness were a technology.
I don’t know what I would do
in her place.

Night comes.
I go home.
I sleep in a bed that does not move.
I set an alarm.

The heater cools when I turn it off.
Nothing breaks.

The video is still there.
The fire is still failing.

I carry this knowledge
like warmth that will not transfer—
something alive,
staying inside me,
where it costs nothing.