She is talking to no one and everyone at once, and her whole face is lit up by it.
The glowing rectangle sits propped against a stack of books, and my girl sits cross-legged before it, half-doing her makeup, half-narrating her whole ordinary Tuesday to strangers she will never touch. Little hearts float up the side of the screen. Numbers climb. A stranger three thousand miles away types that she looks tired, and she laughs, out loud, alone in the room, and says, no, I'm good, I promise, I just didn't sleep.
I remember not sleeping. I remember the specific luxury of a bad night, the way the pillow goes warm and you flip it, the mercy of a jaw that can yawn. She keeps rubbing her eyes with the heel of her hand and I would give anything, anything at all, for tired eyes to rub.
She never looks at the window. Outside it the light is doing that slow gold thing across the floorboards that I used to walk through without noticing, and she has her back to all of it, chin tipped toward the little screen, waving at people made of numbers. Someone sends her a cartoon rose.
She presses her hand to her chest and says aw, you guys, and means it, and the real cup of tea beside her knee goes cold, untouched, steaming its last into a room she is too busy being loved to feel.
I hover near the tea. I remember steam. I remember cold tea and being annoyed at myself for letting it go cold.
Drink it while it's warm, sweet girl. Turn around once.
The light won't last, and neither, I promise, does any of it get less precious than this.