I came in through the gap under the door and found the human awake in the dark, face lit blue, thumb dragging down, down, down, feeding the glowing slab that never fills. I lifted the corner of the blanket to say I was here. Nothing. I stirred the little curtain, I carried in the smell of rain starting three streets over, wet asphalt, a stranger's cigarette, a dog somewhere barking at me because dogs always know.
Nothing. The thumb went down, down.
I have crossed oceans in the time this human has been still. I have peeled a poster off a wall in a city it will never visit and dropped a leaf onto a grave nobody tends and lifted the hair off a girl's neck at a bus stop who smiled without knowing why. I brought all of it here, laid it against the window, knocking, look, come out, the world is loose tonight and moving and so am I.
It kept scrolling. Somewhere in the slab it was chasing the whole world too, the same faces and fires and far-off weather I carry for free, only flattened, only silent, only never touching skin. I could have taken it anywhere. It wanted to stay and swallow everything without leaving the bed.
I gave up. I slipped back under the door, out into the wet street, already lifting the smell of morning somebody in another country was only just beginning to make. I forgot the room the moment I left it. I always do. But I remember the thumb, still going down, chasing me into a screen while I went past the real thing, already gone, already three streets over, already carrying a stranger's laugh to a window that might open.