It’s night like these (where the moon is covered by clouds but its luminescence persists, where the house is so quiet it can make me shiver, where not a thing is out of place but it seems like, feels like nothing is where it belongs) that remind me I am not alone in this world, but I do not stand with anyone, either. A person will sit an arm’s length away, but I will not stretch out my hand to brush my fingers against their shirt.

I will lay in my bed (not necessarily alone, but feeling like it) and curl on one side, a pillow against my back. I will shuffle around the house and prepare a meal for one, wash the equivalent of one person’s load of clothes, and I will carry on as I always have: my heart beating for one. I am not sad because I am accustomed to it, but being accustomed tends to sap the happiness, also.

I wouldn’t call it content, but it is something akin to it. Because content implies warmth. It implies comfort and the sense of everything simply being all right. But I am not content, because I am not warm. I simply am (stillness, silence, steadfastness), and for me, that is enough.

These emotions whirl within me that I am not at liberty to name. I cannot describe them, simply because I do not know how (the words crack, they falter and I bite my tongue against them). I only know that they exist, and that they persist in me with little agitation. I do not mind them being there, because they do not bother me.

There is, honestly, little that bothers me. I do not care that a person’s smile will linger, angled away from me. I do not care that a smell (flowery, light, and soft) carries on in areas I have not been, persists in things I have not touched. I do not care that I do not feel, because, as I have said, I live for one.

I have not cared, I do not care, I will never care.

(Because I am not built for caring.)