you ever get… fascinated?
not by a person. that sounds dramatic —
but by a pattern wearing a person like a coat.
there was this guy.
(i mean: “guy.” i mean: someone with a page, a schedule, a life that orbited mine at odd intervals.)
he wasn’t special.
except for how he kept being exactly where i was already looking.
he’d post something and i’d see it before my brain even registered why i was checking again.
i’d tell myself it was coincidence, that i just happened to open the app at the right second,
that everyone refreshes that often,
that it’s just normal digital hygiene to know the timestamp of someone else’s afternoon.
i knew his routine better than my own.
not on purpose, obviously.
just… you spend enough nights scrolling sideways through someone’s side of the internet
and suddenly you can predict the shape of their silence.
their gaps.
their vanishing acts.
their returns.
and the thing is —
i wasn’t obsessed.
obsession implies effort.
this was just…
attention, sharpened into a habit.
a small ritual.
like checking the weather or re-reading old messages you pretend you “accidentally” didn’t delete.
sometimes he’d post something stupidly mundane, and i’d get that stupid little kick in my stomach,
like:
oh good. you’re still there.
you didn’t evaporate while i wasn’t looking.
i never interacted.
well — barely.
little things.
likes, if it didn’t look too eager.
comments, but only when it could pass as a joke.
messages, but only when i could pretend they were meant for someone else.
he never knew what he was doing to me.
how loud his quiet parts were.
how easy it was to fall into someone’s digital shadow and call it “interest.”
how you can start thinking about a stranger like they’re furniture in your mind,
something permanent,
something you’d notice missing.
he changed nothing about my life.
and somehow rearranged everything.
i’m over it now.
mostly.
i think.
(i hope.)
just funny how someone can be everywhere
without ever actually being yours.