Seen

I am the part of her that watches.

She does not know I am here —

she is busy with the bulb,

reaching up into the uncertain glow,

twisting, adjusting,

trying to get the light right.

She has always been trying

to get the light right.

Not vanity. 

Something closer to fear —

the suspicion, quietly learned,

that what cannot be seen clearly

cannot quite be trusted to exist.

Han would recognize her.

The transparent society

does not demand confession.

It only makes opacity

feel like failure,

like something to fix,

like a bulb that keeps flickering

when it should just stay on.

And so she reaches.

She is not posing.

That is the ironic part.

She has merely internalised the angle,

the quality of light,

the difference between shadow that flatters

and shadow that conceals too much.

The camera is not in her hand.

It is in her mind now.

It has been for years.

McLuhan knew:

the medium does not carry the message,

it becomes the nervous system.

She does not perform for the screen.

She has become

someone for whom

being seen well

is the same thing

as being well.

But I remember the dark.

I remember when this room

could hold ambiguity without apology,

when she could sit in half-light

and not reach for anything,

when the flicker was just a flicker

and not a problem,

when mystery was not

a failure of illumination

but a place she could go

and still be herself,

more herself,

without anyone watching.

Something was kept there.

Not a secret. Not a flaw.

Just the unmanaged interior —

the self that does not perform

because it does not know

it is being seen.

She has almost forgotten

how to go there.

The bulb steadies.

The room sharpens.

She looks around, satisfied,

everything legible,

everything in its proper light.

I flicker once

in the place she no longer looks.

I am still here.

I have always been here.

I am the darkness

she keeps trying to fix.