Oobe ((top)) May 2026

I’m the one who did.

Now I’m an adult with a mortgage and a pill for my thyroid. I stand in grocery lines. I return library books. I attend meetings where we discuss “synergy.” And every few months, without warning, I’ll be washing dishes or sitting at a red light, and the floor will go soft. My hands will look like someone else’s hands. And I’ll remember: I’m the one who did

They hung in the thermosphere like a school of slow fish—fragments of people, each one a thin negative of a life. A firefighter still wearing his helmet. A bride whose veil trailed into nothing. A man in a business suit, tie flapping in solar wind. None of them spoke. But I heard them anyway. I return library books

The first time it happened, I was seven years old, flat on my back with a fever of 104. The ceiling’s water stain—a leering map of South America—began to wobble. Then it dropped. And I’ll remember: They hung in the thermosphere