Right now I am holding a person who is holding a small bright rectangle at arm's length, and their arm is getting tired, and I am the reason. I hold the phone. I hold the sweat starting under their propped elbow. I hold the ring light on its thin metal leg, which would fall the instant I stopped attending to it, and I do not stop.
They have been talking to no one in the room for two hours. The room is not empty to them, but it is empty to me: one body, one chair, the couch cushion accepting the exact shape of them. I hold that shape. I keep the coffee flat in the mug beside them so it stays a circle and not a stain.
I keep the little hearts they are so happy about pinned to the glass, though I have weighed a heart and found it registers nothing at all.
That is the part I have never solved. They read the numbers climbing and I feel them get lighter, sit up, lift their chin toward the lens. Then the numbers fall and the person falls with them, sinks into the cushion, shoulders rolling forward, head dropping, all of it toward me, all of it real weight I can measure. Something out there is pulling on them harder than I am and I cannot see it and I cannot catch it.
So I do the one thing I know. When they finally set the phone face-down and let the whole tired body go slack, trusting the floor, trusting the bed, not checking even once whether either will be there,
they are there.
I am there.