I close the book and stare at the ceiling, letting it sit. The room hums softly, like it's listening.
The poem doesn't feel like it's asking what they are. It feels like it's asking how they work together.
I try to force a word out of it. Human. Mind. Self.
None of them fit.
I open my eyes and look at the mirror again. At my reflection standing there, perfectly intact, yet incomplete. A body with systems that still function, even without memory.
Two minds. One soul.
I glance back at the first poem.
> searching for similarities, mistakes.
Similarity: both heart and brain guide me.
Mistake: neither explains who I was.
Or the mistake is my memory, my brain.
I look down at my shirt again.
The U stares back.
You.
Not me. Not I.
You.
Two brains, one born.
I swallow.
The room isn't talking about anatomy anymore. It's talking about perspective.
I step closer to the mirror, close enough that my breath fogs the glass. The person staring back feels real, but distant, like a character I haven't learned yet.
I tug at the hem of my shirt without thinking.
Something crinkles.
I freeze.
Slowly, I pull the shirt off and turn it inside out.
There's a folded paper tucked into the seam.
I sit down hard on the bed and unfold it with shaking hands.
Another poem.
Longer this time.
> A current fills my chest, is it here to sustain the heart?
Cold wind blows when you are born, is it the same when you grow up?
A melted iron heart, could it stop in a heartbeat?
Two particles coming afar, did they land from a shooting star?
Like all your other parts, are they still doing their part?
Your body shifts every day, yet somehow you remain the same,
a counterpart to yesterday.
I read it twice. Then a third time.
The room feels colder now, or maybe I'm just more aware of it.
A current fills my chest.
I place a hand over my heart, feeling it beat. Steady. Real.
Cold wind when you are born.
I think of the draft in the room. The way I woke up shivering.
A melted iron heart.
Red run iron.
Strength softened into something that flows.
The poem keeps returning to change. Growth. The body shifts while something stays constant.
Counterpart to yesterday.
I look back at the mirror.
My body is here.
My memories aren't.
That's the mistake.
Not the body. Not the heart. Not the brain.
The absence.
I grab the notebook from the table and write down the words that feel solid so far, not answers, just anchors.
Forgotten. Null. You. Heart. Brain. Slippers.
I add another word beneath them.
Memory.
Then, below that:
Erasure.
I don't know yet how they fit together. But for the first time, I feel like I'm not guessing anymore. I'm following a shape I can finally see.
The room hasn't changed.
But I have.
And whatever the seven-letter word is, I know now it won't be something hidden in plain sight.
It's going to be built
from what's missing.
I sit on the bed with the notebook open on my knees, staring at the words I've written.
They don't look like a solution. They look like fragments. Pieces pulled from different corners of the room, connected only by the fact that they refuse to stand alone.
Forgotten.
Null.
You.
Memory.
Erasure.
I read them in different orders, waiting for something to resist. Nothing does.
The second poem returns to me, the one about two ends closing in on each other. Two forms. Two sides.
I flip the page and write again, slower this time.
I read them in different orders, waiting for something to resist. Nothing does.
The second poem returns to me again, the one about two ends closing in on each other. Two forms. Two sides.
I flip the page and write again, slower this time.
Beginning.
End.
The idea settles into place, not suddenly, not with excitement, but with a quiet sense of inevitability. The poems never give answers outright. They compress meaning. They fold it inward. They keep pointing me away from what things are and toward how they're arranged.
I look back at the poem from the slippers.
The world is forgotten and the time is wrong.
Time.
Order.
Sequence.
I stand up and walk to the door. It's still closed. Still unmoved by everything I've figured out so far. The room isn't interested in understanding. It wants articulation.
I look down at the notebook again. The words I gathered aren't meant to stay as words. They're placeholders. Labels for something more basic.
Structure.
I think back through the room in order. The clues didn't come randomly. They followed a progression. Each one led to the next by comparison, not by meaning. Similarities first. Mistakes second. Endpoints pulling toward each other.
Two ends.
I flip back through the notes and start pairing them, not by theme, but by position. What comes first. What comes last.
Null and the slippers.
You and red iron.
Memory and erasure.
The realization doesn't arrive all at once. It assembles slowly, like something I've been circling the entire time without naming.
I look around again, this time with that single idea in mind.
Numbers are everywhere, once I allow myself to see them. Not written out. Not labeled. Embedded. Structural. Implied.
Seven letters.
Two ends.
Sequences that don't complete.
The poems aren't poems. They're instructions for alignment.
I glance at the bed, the center of the room, where everything keeps returning. I think of how I woke up here. How everything in this place pretends to be ordinary while quietly refusing to behave like it should.
I stand in front of the door again.
I say the word quietly first, testing it.