Searching For- Spiraling Spirit In- (2025)

The body of the email was blank except for a single line of white text on a black background, which is impossible because my email client only does dark-on-light.

I walked home in the dark, my shoes soaked, my chest light. I didn't sleep. I didn't need to. For the first time in years, I wasn't searching for something. Searching for- spiraling spirit in-

My apartment went cold. Not metaphorically. The little ceramic heater by my desk clicked off. The LED strip under my cabinets flickered once, then settled into a dim, jaundiced yellow. I closed the laptop. Opened it. The email was gone. The body of the email was blank except

The hyphens in the subject line started to make a strange kind of sense. They weren't pauses. They were paths . Trails leading inward. I didn't need to

It was me, but older. More tired. A version of myself who had never stopped searching. He—I—wore a coat I didn't own and held a compass whose needle spun in perfect, useless circles. He looked up from the reflection and mouthed three words: You found it.