Descent

Not. Now.

a descent through ideas
not mapped
just followed.

what held at the surface began to thin

and somewhere between signal
and what it did to us
we stopped writing alone

these are the notes that surfaced between Miles Hack and I

It’s holding Miles.

Just.

A hairline crack, maybe — maybe the kind that hums if you stand too close.
Enough to move.
Not enough to explain.
You felt it before it happened.

We’ll travel light.
No alarms.
Just pressure,
easing,
then ,
space

Still steady you say.
But the hum’s changed.

We know what happened last time.
Not louder — closer.
Like the ship’s remembering something it never logged.

ㅤ

Zen’gali starwaters do that, I hear.
They don’t fracture hulls. They thin assumptions.
Until you freel the silence sucked out of your lungs.
Slowly.
ㅤ

I’m not turning back.
There’s a difference between risk
and,
recognition.
ㅤ

If this Waygate has no records,
it’s because no one stayed long enough to write them.
ㅤ

Pressure stable.
Hands light.
Eyes open.

If the crack starts singing,
I’ll listen.

Then —
we descend.

We checked the instruments twice.

Not for error —
for agreement.

They all returned the same reading.

That’s when it stopped helping.

The ship had already begun
to remember for us.

Corridors shortening
when we thought of home.

Doors opening
to places we hadn’t reached.

We marked it as drift.

But drift implies direction.

This —

felt like recall.

The first thing I forgot was the stars
ㅤ
Mind encountering resistance
The crew knew - cracks permeating thought
Our honesty beckoned adherence
ㅤ
We didn’t see it - the unspoken
My language held, but meanings pooled in the wrong worlds,
Reaching apex upon arrival

There was a delay.

Not in signal.

In us.

Meaning arriving
just before
the words allowed it.

I heard myself respond
to things
no one had said yet.

Or maybe —

they had.

Just not here.

ㅤ
I didn’t see it — I recognized it all around
Places affect cognition.
Communications break down.
Fractures reflected through alien perspective
ㅤ
The waygate was not recorded
Because it didn’t want to be
I began to forget things that hadn’t happened
ㅤ
It wasn’t a descend into a location,
but a condition.
ㅤ
We ventured closer, while minds still held

Held what,
I’m not certain.

The structure, yes.
The naming — less.

It loosens
first at the edges,

then where it used to anchor.

The ship doesn’t correct it.

It keeps it.

Stores it
somewhere between routes
and recollection.

I think

we are being
remembered

slightly
out of order

and it’s

not
unpleasant.

Then.
We weren’t travelling.

We were looping.

What you called stars
were just memories far enough away
to look fixed.

I felt the pull before the curve.
Not toward a body —
toward a recollection with mass.

Each orbit shaved something off.
Names first.
Then sequence.
Then the confidence that sequence mattered.

We kept circling what felt like a planet,
but the gravity knew my childhood better than the charts.
Old rooms acquired moons.
Unsaid sentences developed tides.

You thought we were descending.
I thought we were remembering sideways.

The condition tightened.

Not pressure — familiarity.

Things I’d never lived
began insisting they had weight.
Things I had lived
lost their timestamps.

At some point I realised:

If we escape this orbit,
we won’t know whether we left a place
or a version of ourselves
that finally learned how to hold.

I’ve stopped asking which is which.

The pull is stable.

For now.

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Something more from Miles Hack?

Edible Stones

Something more from me?

I’m always open to thoughtful writing collaborations.

Nothing truly leaves — it just changes how it stays.

A little more?

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If something moved in you — a silence that whispered — I’d love to hear it below, or in my DM’s.

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All artwork courtesy of NDjin Gallery