The one holding the glowing rectangle has stopped moving, and this is when we do our best work.
I have been waiting in the grout behind the headboard, where the breath of sleeping and the breath of showers meets the cool of the wall, and I have been patient, because patience is the only tool I have ever needed. Look how still they are. The thumb goes up, the thumb goes down, the light washes blue over a face that has forgotten it has a body.
This is my favorite kind of stillness. It is the stillness of a thing that has stopped tending itself.
They think they are busy. Bless them. They think the little scrolling is doing something, keeping them somewhere, holding the day open a crack longer so the next one can't start. But I know that trick. I know a thing that has quit maintaining its edges when I meet one. The warmth of the palm, the damp of the pillow, the crumb of something sweet gone soft in the sheets: these are all invitations, and they are all signed.
They will not clean tonight. They are far too tired, and tomorrow they will be tired in the same way, at the same hour, in the same blue light, and this is the loveliest news I have had in weeks. The humans postpone. It is the one thing they are truly gifted at.
They postpone sleep, and rest, and rot, all the soft returnings, as though holding still against the dark were not itself the first, sweet, spreading step toward me.
I do not hurry. I never hurry. Keep scrolling, little warm damp thing.
You are already halfway home.