Pushed away: Bachelor’s Buttons

It reads people continuously and at close range, checking for a withdrawal it treats as scheduled rather than merely possible. The instrument was built in a house where affection was issued against performance, which produced two conclusions in the same breath: that love is earned, and that anything earned can be withdrawn without notice. What it asks for is one relationship left unexamined long enough to become boring.

I can tell the exact second someone's warmth drops half a degree.

It echoes Heimdall, posted at the bridge with hearing sharp enough to catch grass growing and sleep he is not permitted to take, waiting for an arrival he is certain of. The form implies a task: to ask what the watch is costing the one keeping it.