Weight of Nothing

You shake the box again, feeling the weight shift inside. It’s slight, almost nothing, but enough to hold your attention. You think of the possibilities—something small, perhaps something useful.

Perhaps a pencil to scribble a note or mark a path. The thought of it makes you oddly hopeful, like how small things do when the world has lost shape.

Or maybe it’s a clue. Yes, it could be a clue, something clever and necessary, something that will guide you further. This hope galvanizes you, making your fingers quicker as you tug at the lid, eager to expose the secret.

The box opens. And there is nothing inside.

You stare, then frown, the weight of the cardboard still lingering in your hands. You shake it again, ears straining for the sound and that faint knocking that drew you to this moment.

A quick tilt, a sharper shake—and then you feel it. Not the contents, but the box itself, the way the inner flap of the lid knocks against the sides as though mocking your expectation.

Ah.

It comes to you then–the kind of realization that sits cold and steady in your chest: this is what a twist ought to be. Not some fantastical leap from outside the frame but something born from the thing itself, its nature folded inward like a snake eating its tail.

Infuriating. Inescapable.

You laugh, sharp and low, at yourself and the world, at how quickly belief fills a space with meaning. You hadn’t even known what you expected—only that the box should contain something.

And so, of course, it contains nothing at all.

The weight you felt wasn’t false. The sound, imagined. It was the box, being true to itself, and that truth was empty from the start.