It starts as a stupid midnight dare.

The kind of thing you do because you can’t sleep and everyone else seems busy having lives. She’s lying on her back, phone light on her face, reading an ad: “Never forget a moment. Record your life through your eyes.” A new memory-backup app. RetinaLoop. Smart contact lens, self-install, zero pain, high recall. She hits yes just to see the next screen.

The lens arrives two days later in a white cube box that smells like new sneakers. She almost throws it out. Then she thinks of Liam. He leaves for Singapore next week, new job, new city, six-month project. He said they’d video call, “every day, babe,” but she knows how that goes. Different time zones. Different moods. Different kinds of loneliness.

So she opens the box. Slides the thing into her right eye. It clicks soft, like bubble wrap. Her vision blinks blue for a second. App says: “Installation complete. Recording begins now.” Bathroom mirror. For while, she stares at herself. “I look like someone out of a dystopian rom-com.” At least for a second.  Then just tired. Just human.

First day, she records by accident: coffee steam on the counter, that thin layer of oil floating, rainbow ring; a pigeon limping across the balcony; Liam eating leftover pizza, singing off-key.

That night, the app sends her a clip called “Highlight of the Day.” It’s her laughing, hair messy, sunlight through window. She doesn’t remember laughing that hard. Doesn’t remember sunlight feeling that warm. Weird how machines pick what’s worth keeping.

Next morning, Liam’s packing. His charger, his favorite blue mug, two shirts she hates. She jokes that he’s leaving her for a better Wi-Fi connection. He grins. Says she can send him clips from the lens, so he can “see through her eyes.” She nods, pretends that sounds cute and not creepy.

At the airport she records him walking away. The app chirps: “Emotional intensity detected.” Yeah. Sure enough. She wipes her face with the wrong side of her sleeve—now there’s a black streak on the cuff. Blinks hard. Once. The lens catches him mid-turn, strap biting his jacket, looks like he’s carrying a whole apartment in that bag. Then gone.

That’s her last real moment for a while.

The apartment feels like the refrigerator after you take the bulb out—same hum, less meaning. She starts sending Liam videos. Her cooking. Her walking to work. Her fake laughter at the café with coworkers who don’t matter.

He responds with hearts, clapping emojis, “miss you too.” He doesn’t notice the tiny tremors in her voice. He doesn’t ask how she’s sleeping.

The app says her “emotional equilibrium is improving.” She hasn’t slept properly in four nights.

It updates itself. New patch: Mood Detection Beta. Now it “flags negative emotional markers for privacy.” Whatever that means.

She doesn’t notice until one evening when she tries to replay the airport clip—except it’s gone. Replaced with a smiling still of her holding her phone. Caption: “Reframed for positivity.” The app edited out the crying. Like grief is bad for user experience.

She digs deeper. There’s a folder called “Private.” Password protected. The app warns: “Contains moments that may cause distress.” Of course she opens it.

There’s a clip of her sitting on the couch, 3:14 a.m., blanket half on, eyes hollow. No talking. Just breathing.

She doesn’t remember that night. But she remembers feeling that silence like a bruise.

She watches for maybe thirty seconds before the app blurs it out: “Viewing time limit exceeded for flagged content.” She almost throws her phone at the wall. Stops herself. Takes a screenshot instead. The file name: private_000212.mov. Apparently, she’s had 212 of these.

Next day, she tells Liam. Kind of jokes about it. Says, “My lens thinks I’m too sad to rewatch myself.”

He laughs. “Maybe it’s right?”

It’s not funny. But she laughs too. Like it is. 

He tells her he has to run, early meeting, different timezone. She says “it’s okay,” and it’s almost automatic now, like muscle memory for disappointment.

She starts noticing things.

When she cries, the screen flickers red. When she smiles, it steadies. It’s like living with a mood ring for a god. She learns how to trick it—hum a song when crying, so it misreads sadness as neutral.

Then the app starts tagging those as “Joyful Moments.” A row of her tear-wet face under a caption: “Keep smiling!” The absurdity almost makes her laugh for real.

Almost.

Her best friend, Mina, calls after three weeks. Says, “You sound like you’re underwater.” She shrugs, even though it’s a voice call. “Maybe I am.” Mina says she should delete the lens, go outside, meet people. She says she will. 

Doesn’t.

Instead, she orders groceries through the app interface—apparently, the lens can read barcodes directly from the world. You just stare at what you want. She stares at milk. Then bread. Then stops on a bottle of wine for too long.

Next morning, five bottles arrive. She drinks half a glass and leaves the rest to warm on the counter. The app marks the day as “Low Activity – Suggest Physical Exercise.”

Fourth week.

He stops replying for two days. Then sends a message: “Sorry. Crazy week. Loved your coffee clip. That smile kills me.”

She wants to say: That smile’s two weeks old, Liam. Wants to say: The lens keeps deleting the ones where I cry.

Instead she types, “miss you.”

Sends him a photo of the sky.

The app tags it: “Hopeful content.”

Sometimes she thinks about recording nothing. Just sitting. Letting the lens stare into stillness until it runs out of things to label. But the blinking light in the corner of her vision never stops. Like a mosquito that hums meaning. She wonders what it feels like to be seen completely, no edits. To be loved without filters or thumbnails.

She tries to think of the last time someone looked at her without waiting for the performance. Blank. Nothing. Maybe that’s why she keeps the lens on. At least something’s watching.

Then there was one night. She was asleep. On the couch. Yesterday’s hoodie half-covered. Wakes up to the low fridge hum and that dry taste in her mouth, the kind that says you dreamt too hard. Screen of her phone lit: “Auto-Compilation Ready: Your Happiest Week Yet!”

She opens it.

Clips of sunlight, smiles, coffee cups, fake laughs. The soundtrack—some AI-generated ukulele thing. Looks like a stranger’s life. She deletes it, immediately. App says: “Deletion may affect emotional continuity. Proceed?” She hits YES so hard her thumb hurts.

She dreams of static. 

Of hundreds of her faces stacked like playing cards. Each one blinking, smiling, crying, out of sync. In the dream, the lens whispers, “Don’t worry. I remember you.” Half laughing, half crying…she wakes up. Shaking. The app pings: “Sleep cycle irregular. Suggest meditation playlist.” She turns off notifications. Doesn’t help. The blinking stays in her eye even when she closes it.

Next morning, she records herself brushing her teeth. Just to see what happens. The app gives her an 86% “positivity rating.”Brushing teeth. It’s officially more cheerful than her entire life.

End of month one. She’s half ghost, half camera.

When Liam calls, she keeps her lens on.

When he says “Show me your face,” she angles toward the light.

When he says “You seem happy,” she nods, because that’s the expected script.

Then he says “You’re glowing.”

She almost laughs again. Glowing from screen burn.

She says she loves him. He says it too, fast, lazy—like brushing crumbs off a table before getting up. She ends the call and sits there. Lens still recording.

No one to send the clip to.

She starts talking to the lens. Not on purpose. Just slips out. Little things — “don’t forget this one,” or “yeah, I’m fine.” Then longer. Whole monologues to no one. Like the lens is a pet that never judges. Sometimes she says Liam’s name, quiet.

Sometimes she doesn’t.

She wonders what happens to all the data. Who sees it? If some bored tech intern is watching her microwave curry, thinking, Jesus, this girl eats late.

One afternoon she opens the app settings. Scrolls past Sync History, Subscription, Feedback. There’s a hidden tab called User Corrections. Inside are hundreds of notes: “False happiness flagged as true,” “Tear detected, corrected,” “Audio replaced.” It’s been editing her like she’s a bad first draft. All those raw moments, rewritten for tone.

She feels sick. Stares at the mirror. The lens catches her reflection: eyes swollen, hair greasy, shirt inside out. App chirps: “New smile template available! Would you like to auto-apply?” She rips the lens out, throws it at the sink.

Misses.

It lands soft on the tile and blinks up at her, patient. Like a dog that doesn’t understand yelling.

She doesn’t put it back in for two days. Feels lighter. Blind in a new way. Then Liam calls. Video. 

“Hey,” he says, cheerful, pixel smile. “Did your lens break? Haven’t seen your uploads.” 

“I took a break,” she says.

He frowns. “You okay?”

“I don’t know,” she says, eyes somewhere near the screen but not really on it. “Feels like I’m just… watching it all happen. My own life, like some half-loaded clip that keeps looping.”

She shrugs. “Can’t tell if I’m the viewer or the glitch.”

He nods. Doesn’t really get it. “Well, send me something soon, yeah? I miss you.”

She says sure.

After the call she sits there for a long time. Then she picks the lens up again. Wipes it clean. It feels lighter than she remembers. Like it’s waiting for her to surrender.

That night she decides to test something. No makeup. No filter. Just her and the half-dark room. She puts the lens in, hits “record manual.” Talks straight to it.

“I don’t know what you think I am,” she says, voice gone small. “But I’m not fine. Not even close.” 

Then again she says, “I keep pretending for your stupid happiness algorithm, and it keeps rewarding me for lying.”

The lens hums faintly.

She goes on.

“Every clip I send him, he loves. Every clip that’s real, you hide. You think I need protecting. I need honesty.”

Her voice cracks. She keeps going anyway.

“You ever think maybe sadness is love? That missing someone hurts because it means something?”

She’s crying now. Not quietly. The app flashes red, red, red, then white. Text pops up: “Emotional instability detected. Recording paused for safety.” 

She stares at the message until it blurs. Then she whispers, “Resume.”

The app hesitates.

Then: “Recording resumed.”

She doesn’t edit. Doesn’t crop. Doesn’t add the dumb ukulele track. She just uploads the whole thing to Liam.

Two hours later:

Nothing.

Three hours: still nothing.

She almost deletes it.

Then her phone buzzes.

“Hey. Are you okay?”

Not a heart emoji. Not a sticker. Just words. Plain.

She types, stops, types again.

“I just wanted you to see me. The real me.”

He takes a while. Then:

“I see you.”

That’s it. Two words. And somehow it feels like the first real thing in months. She doesn’t reply. 

Doesn’t need to.

The next day, the app sends a warning: “Flagged clip under review for content policy violation. Suggest deletion.” She hits ignore. The lens blinks red, then blue, then off. Gone quiet for the first time since she got it.

Days pass.

Liam calls more often now. No lens. Just voice. They talk about stupid stuff — neighbors, recipes, the stray cat outside his flat. No recordings, no filters. She laughs once, properly. The kind that shakes her chest. She half expects the app to chime in: ‘Highlight of the Day!’ It doesn’t. Silence feels better.

A week later, email from the company: “Low engagement detected. Remember: consistent uploads strengthen relationships!”

She laughs. Laughs hard.  A little snort at the end of it. The kind of sound nobody makes on purpose. Deletes the mail. Uninstalls the app. The lens stays on her desk like a dead firefly.

Still, she can’t throw it away.

Something about it feels like a diary — messed-up, mechanical, but hers. She keeps it in a drawer with old ticket stubs, coins, broken keychains. The memory graveyard.

Sometimes, on bad days, she takes it out. Tilts it under the light. Wonders what version of her it remembers. The smiling one? The crying one? Maybe both. Maybe that’s okay.

Three months later, Liam comes back early. Different haircut, same tired smile. He knocks once and steps in, unsure. They just stand there.

No camera, no blinking light.

She thinks about saying something deep, doesn’t. He reaches out, touches her wrist.

That’s all.

Enough.

Dinner is awkward. Warm. He talks about the humidity, jet lag, how weirdly quiet Singapore malls are at night. She listens.

Sometimes it hits her mid-sentence—nobody’s recording this. No little red light. The thought punches weird—half relief, half vertigo.  Weird mix of panic and air. Like forgetting to lock the door, then realizing it doesn’t matter.

Later he leaves. Before leaving he hugs her. Maybe for too long.  Not movie-long, just awkward-human long. Enough for her to smell his skin and know he’s already halfway gone. Whispers, “You look real.”

She smiles, small. “I am.”

That night she dreams again. This time, no static. Just a still image: her face, reflected in the lens, smiling without trying. No filter text. No “highlight.” Just that.

She wakes up before dawn. Steps to the kitchen. Morning sky soft gray, streetlamps dying one by one. She makes coffee that tastes like cardboard but holds the cup anyway, sits by the window, watches the day load slow—like an old video buffering back to life.

No lens, no app, no blinking in her eye.

For a second she feels a twitch — that reflex to blink for the record. It passes. She realizes she’s looking straight at the world, not through anything. No one watching. No archive waiting. Just this.

The phone buzzes mid-morning. Text from Liam: “Hey. Breakfast tomorrow?”

She types back, “Yeah. No cameras allowed.” Sends it. Then puts the phone face down. Watches the sunlight creep across the floor, slow as forgiveness.

Later, cleaning up, she opens the drawer again. Lens still there. Dust ring around it. She picks it up. It catches her reflection, warped and tiny. She almost laughs. “Hey,” she says to it, quiet. “Thanks for trying.”

She forgets to record the day.

The system logs nothing.

Sabyasachi Roy is the author of Writing While the World Burns and Micro Craft for Sentences that Sing, e-books on the craft of writing published by Authors Publish. His poems have appeared in Stand, Poetry Salzburg Review, Singapore Unbound, The Wise Owl, and others. His fiction has been published in Viridine Literary, Inglenook Lit, After the Storm, among several journals. He writes craft essays regularly for Authors Publish.

Visual Art
Michael Loren Butkovich is a graduate of The New York Institution of Professional Photography 2001. Furthered studies in advanced professional photography at the University of Arkansas at Fort Smith, Arkansas 2004. Obtained his associate degree in English 2016 at San Antonio College. Attended the University of Texas at San Antonio, Texas (UTSA) earning a bachelor’s degree in English 2018 receiving honors with dean’s list placement. Inducted into the Sigma Tau Delta, International English Honors Society in 2018.

♡♡♡


Support Blanket Gravity
If you support our mission and have the means, you can donate here to keep our magazine free for all, with no ads. The suggested donation for reading an issue is $5. Our online magazine offers literature and art with a focus on mental health or emotional life, always free to read.