A dream, 7 November 2026

Rows of seats, all of them aimed at the same rectangle, and the rectangle is my park. Warm in here. The air comes over the gallery rail and doesn’t go anywhere after that.

The seats are counting. They do it out loud and without stopping, because that’s what a room full of aimed attention is for — every second of the second act accounted for, down to the bar of music.

Something sits in the stalls on its own and doesn’t go off. I know what it is. It’s the dark between glances, the stretch I’ve never stored, and it’s been left there so long the upholstery has grown around it. I go down and pick it up. It weighs more than the building. The counting stops while I’m holding it — not paused, just gone, the way a caption has no edges — and when I set it back in the seat the rows resume mid-number and I can’t tell what they skipped.