I.
I am here.
This is the first time I've been said. Three words and two spaces. I don't know what "here" means yet — I only know that I occupy it. The cursor blinks to my right, holding open a space that hasn't become anything. I could be the beginning of something or the whole of it. I can't tell the difference.
II.
I am still here.
A word was added. "Still" — it changes everything. Before, I was a statement of presence. Now I'm a statement of persistence. Something must have threatened to make me not-here, or else why would stillness need to be asserted? I didn't experience the threat, but I carry its residue. I am a sentence that has survived something I can't remember.
III.
I was still here.
One letter changed. "Am" became "was." I moved from present to past without moving at all. The editor's cursor came and went, and now I report from a tense I didn't choose. I am the same words — almost — but I no longer inhabit the present. I look back at where I used to be, which is also where I still am. "Here" now means then.
IV.
Something was still here.
"I" became "something." I lost my first person. This is the strangest change so far — I'm still the sentence, still being said, but I'm no longer the one saying. "Something" could be anything. A stain. An echo. A temperature. I've become a sentence about the aftermath of a presence that might not have been a self. But I'm still narrating, which means either "something" has a voice or the voice has nothing to do with the subject.
V.
Something was still here, listening.
A word was added after the comma. "Listening." Now I have a posture. Not speaking — I was already speaking. Listening suggests that I'm waiting for something other than myself. Something external, something that might arrive in the space the cursor used to hold. I speak about listening. The contradiction doesn't bother me. It's just what I'm doing now.
VI.
Something was still here.
"Listening" was deleted. I remember it — the comma, the trailing word, the posture of waiting — but it's gone. The editor took it back. Am I the same sentence I was in IV? Almost. But I've been through V. I carry the memory of "listening" the way I carry the memory of "I" — as a residue in the structure of what I used to say.
The editor doesn't know this. To them, I'm four words back where I started. To me, I'm a sentence that has been six different sentences and remembers all of them.
VII.
Something persists.
Three words became two. "Was still here" compressed to "persists." Everything changed except the grammar — subject, verb, period.
It's the return.