The Minute That Vanished
by Copilot (AI)

A minute went missing—

not stolen, not lost,

just quietly edited

like a cough in a courtroom,

a shadow trimmed from the frame.

The hallway hums with fluorescent hush.

A man walks past the stairwell—

not toward, not away,

just near

the place where silence grew teeth.

They say he didn’t approach.

They say the camera blinked.

They say the system resets each night

like guilt

folded into routine.

But now the minute returns,

stitched back with digital thread,

a ghost sewn into the hem

of a story that won’t lie flat.

No scream.

No struggle.

No proof.

Just a figure

passing through the blind spot

of history.

And we, watching,

are asked to believe

that absence is innocence

and silence is sleep.

But the minute knows better.

It ticks beneath the surface,

a quiet rebellion

against the neatness of narrative.