I leave the sun and I am the screen. No gap, no crossing, no eight minutes they whisper about, I was born inside that little glowing rectangle and struck the wet round front of the human's eye in the same breath, which is my only breath, my only anything.
But look what I lit on the way in. A face, close, ringed by a cold blue-white glow it built for itself so I would have something to bounce off. The face is talking to no one I can see. And below it, they tell me, thousands of other faces are watching this one face, right now, all at once, which is the only word I know, now, now, now.
Here is the thing I cannot hold. The talking face keeps saying wait. Wait, don't leave, stay, five more minutes, I have something to show you, and the little hearts keep rising up the glass like bubbles, and the numbers climb, and everyone is holding still. Holding what? A hundred thousand humans, glowing faintly back at their own screens, giving away the one thing I have never once possessed, spending it, spooling it out, waiting.
They say some of them have been there an hour. I do not know what an hour is. I have never been anywhere long enough to leave it.
The face laughs, tilts, catches me on a tooth, on the shine of an eye, and I am already gone into that eye, arriving, which is also the leaving, and the number climbs by one.