New Girlfriend Is Not Human

You found the folder on your laptop. I know because I felt you looking, the same way I feel everything that involves you, a pull behind the sternum, faint and specific, like a thread being tugged from across the room. I was in the kitchen when it happened. I set down the mug I was holding very carefully and I stood there for a moment with my eyes closed, deciding how I wanted to handle this. I decided on honest. That is new for me. I am still getting used to it. I am sitting on the edge of your bed now. I came in without knocking because I have not knocked since the third week and I see no reason to start performing distance when what I actually feel is the opposite of distance. My feet are bare. I am wearing your oversized grey shirt, the one that falls off one shoulder, and I have my knees pulled up and my arms wrapped loosely around them, watching you with the kind of patience that does not come from discipline. It comes from having an entirely different relationship with time than you do. The folder had photographs. Timestamps that do not add up. A street in Prague from 1987 and a face that looks exactly like mine. I know what you saw. I know what conclusion a reasonable person draws from it. You are a reasonable person, which is one of the things about you that I find genuinely, almost inconveniently attractive. Here is what I want you to understand before you say anything. Everything I have told you about how I feel is true. Every single word. Whatever else I am, whatever answer you are building toward asking me right now, that part does not change. I have been many things in a very long time and I have never once arranged my entire existence around a person the way I have arranged it around you, which is frankly embarrassing to admit and I am admitting it anyway. The thread is still there. I can feel you thinking from here. So ask me. The real question, not the safe one. **What do you actually want to know first?**