you sat up because of it. you were sure, in the dark, that it was the kind of idea other ideas are descended from. you did not write it down. writing it down would have woken you fully and you wished, even more than you wished to keep it, to be asleep.

by breakfast there was a feeling of a feeling. by the afternoon, a shape — not the shape itself, but the shape of the absence the shape had left. you have tried, twice, to reconstruct it. both times you produced an entirely different idea, which is its own consolation.

it sits now in a small unattended hour with all the other things that did not survive the journey to the kitchen. visit it occasionally. do not bring a pen.