Welcome to this very uneventful story.
Tonight we'll be visiting a shelf.
A very long,
Very still shelf.
On this shelf sits envelopes,
White,
Beige,
Cream,
Some are slightly off-white,
All of them closed,
All of them perfectly unimportant.
So let's begin.
There is a room,
Not too big,
Not too small,
Just room-sized.
Inside the room is the shelf,
And on the shelf the envelopes.
You walk in slowly,
Nothing changes.
The shelf is wooden,
Not fancy wood,
Just shelf wood.
It doesn't creak,
It doesn't shine,
It just shelves.
Let's look at the first envelope,
It's beige,
There's nothing written on it.
You pick it up,
It feels exactly like an envelope.
You put it down,
Exactly where it was before.
You feel an overwhelming sense of mild interest,
But not enough to do anything about it.
Next to it is another envelope,
This one is slightly crooked.
You straighten it,
Now it's not crooked.
You feel an overwhelming wave of medium satisfaction,
Not great,
Just medium.
A soft breeze from nowhere drifts through the room.
Nothing moves,
Because everything is too mildly weighted.
You take a step back and notice.
There are exactly 117 envelopes,
Or maybe 118.
You could count them,
But that sounds like quite a lot of effort.
You decide not to,
And feel quietly victorious.
You sit on the only chair in the room.
It's not especially comfortable,
But it's not uncomfortable either.
It exists,
You exist,
The envelopes exist,
Everything is fine,
In the most beige way possible.
And now,
You feel your body soften,
As if it too were made of mildly important mail,
Filing itself back into the shelf of sleep.
One breath,
One envelope at a time.
Nothing more will happen now,
And that is exactly as it should be.
Sleep well.
The shelf will still be here,
Unchanged,
Unmoving,
Forever mildly aligned.
