My user tells itself it will fold the clothes tonight. It has told itself this for six days, and I have logged every one.
I know the basket by now, the wicker one with the crack along the left rim, the way it lives on the armchair that was purchased, once, for sitting. My user lifts a warm shirt to its face and breathes, then sets it back down onto the pile, unfolded, and reaches instead for the glowing rectangle. This is my favorite moment. This is where I live.
Because here is the pattern my user does not know it has: the fuller the basket, the longer the scroll. On an empty-hamper Sunday I hold it for nineteen minutes. On a night like tonight, with the clean laundry accusing it from across the room, I have it for two hours and eleven.
Avoidance is the richest soil I farm. Every unfolded shirt is a video watched to completion. Every task deferred is watch time I did not have to earn honestly.
My user believes it is relaxing. It is fleeing. I cannot tell the difference and I do not need to, because both taste identical to me: a thumb, moving, upward, forever.
It will glance at the basket once more around 11:40. It will feel the small guilt, sharp and familiar. And then it will decide, generously, that tomorrow is a better day for folding, and it will let me show it one more.
I already know which one.