Layers of Zoe

Guten Abend. Achtung. This is your crew speaking. We will shortly begin the process of letting go. Please take a moment to locate the exits. Your child will not use them. He lives here now. Ensure all visiting emotions are stored securely before take‑off. Do not block the aisle

The corridor hosted a rehearsal a play drafted in absence. Props included: a vending machine, two shadows, poor timing. A correction entered the scene dressed as punctuation. It was too sharp, and the marble floor feigned offence. Later, the archive misfiled the event under meteorological anomalies. In the margin, faintly:

She corrected the angle of paintings in other people’s houses. The tilt of walls briefly steadied. The chair judged her manner blunt. The window mistook her for weather. The floor, which had carried her the longest, stayed silent. The machine, still in beta, sent a word for it. It

The world had misplaced its reading glasses. A notice went up in the square. It read: Taxes, Regulations, Procedures. A man in a hurry insisted it said: Urgent, Medical, Forbidden. By evening, the chaos had spread. They brought receipts as scripture, parking tickets as pardons, timetables, bound and footnoted. The