The potato is almost thirty years old when the silence stops feeling temporary and starts feeling intentional, which matters because silence has always existed in the cellar, but has never before seemed to be paying attention. He rolls slightly, expecting the familiar resistance of another body, and instead meets air, which feels rude only because it confirms something he has been avoiding naming. He does not panic. Panic requires urgency, and urgency requires the belief that something can still be prevented. What he feels instead is recognition, the quiet click of a pattern completing itself.
He has been alone for a while now. Long enough for loneliness to stop presenting itself as a crisis and start behaving like infrastructure. It is simply there, load-bearing, part of the design. The cellar accommodates this easily. The basement accommodates everything. It is cool and dim and patient in a way that does not feel kind so much as indifferent. If the potato assigns meaning to this, that is his habit, not the cellar’s intention.
Somewhere not far away, his parents exist. They are alive. This fact should be comforting. Sometimes it is. Sometimes it isn’t very clear. They lean into each other without discussion, without metaphor, without ever appearing to wonder whether this is still the correct configuration. They discuss storage conditions. They discuss nothing. Their relationship has long since ceased to be a narrative and become a setting. The potato once thought this was wisdom. Now he suspects it is efficiency. Both interpretations feel incomplete.
The potato thinks about his former girlfriend, not because she haunts him, but because she no longer does. She is married. This sentence does not wobble. It does not invite interpretation. It does not ask him how he feels about it. It is complete, like a closed door that does not rattle when tested. He does not imagine the wedding. He does not picture the spouse. He does not indulge in hypothetical timelines where he stayed, where things unfolded differently, where clarity arrived before consequences. That kind of thinking has grown decorative and he has grown tired of interior decorating.
He left her. This matters. It keeps the story clean. There is no villain, no betrayal, no dramatic abandonment. There is only a sentence spoken carefully, maturely, with the confidence of someone who believes time will wait politely while he sorts himself out. She did not argue. She did not bargain. She accepted, which should have been alarming. Two days later, she was gone, and later still, she was married, and now she is finished being part of this story except as a fact. Closure has occurred. It is unhelpful.
The potato lies in the cellar and lets this fact exist beside him without engaging it. This is new behaviour. Earlier versions of himself would have interrogated it, rotated it, pressed it against his chest to see if it still hurt. Now it simply sits there, inert. He feels lighter and resents this immediately. Relief should feel earned. Relief should involve effort. Relief should at least consult him before arriving.
The cellar notices none of this. The cellar has seen many potatoes. It does not care about age, heartbreak, or narrative arcs. It measures weight, density, and duration. The potato qualifies. The cellar existed before the potato learned language and will exist after the potato abandons whatever conclusions it is circling. If the silence feels intentional, it is only because silence leaves room, and the potato has a habit of filling space.
He narrates himself anyway. He cannot help it. Here we see the potato, almost thirty, stored indefinitely, emotionally solvent but philosophically overdrafted. Here we see him mistaking awareness for progress, insight for movement. He laughs at this, quietly, and the sound dissolves before it can become a performance. Humour remains his most reliable tool, not because it solves anything, but because it punctures the impulse to dramatise.
Time behaves strangely here. It does not advance so much as thicken. Days pass, or do not, and the distinction loses urgency. Without others around to confirm the sequence, time becomes texture. The potato experiments with thought, the way one experiments with posture when sitting too long. He thinks in lists. He thinks in aphorisms. He thinks in abandoned metaphysical ladders that almost lead somewhere before collapsing under their own cleverness. Meaning is not discovered, he decides, it is tolerated. Loneliness is a space that forgot its instructions. Closure is knowledge pretending to be comfort. These thoughts amuse him briefly and then recede.
The cellar door opens occasionally. Light enters like an interruption that believes it is important. A hand hovers, evaluates, withdraws. Early on, the potato interpreted this as judgment. Later, he interpreted it as fate. Now he recognises it as inventory management. This shift feels significant, so he immediately mistrusts it. Being chosen is not the same as being understood, and neither guarantees relief. When the door closes again, nothing changes, which is the most honest outcome available.
A younger potato arrives at some point because this is how cellars work. New things appear without explanation. The younger potato is bright, unburdened, still convinced that decisions will eventually feel correct. The older potato does not warn him. Everyone deserves to arrive uninitiated. They lean slightly toward each other because warmth does not require meaning to function. The older potato notices that he no longer assigns narrative weight to this instinct. It is just warmth. This feels like progress. He does not announce it.
Above them, a spider rebuilds its web repeatedly. It breaks. It returns. The spider does not despair. The potato briefly considers whether this is wisdom or simply a lack of imagination, then decides the distinction is unnecessary. Repetition can be sacred without being meaningful. The cellar approves of repetition.
The potato thinks again about his parents, alive and intact, choosing each other without discussion. Once, he had asked his mother how she knew his father was the one. She had shrugged and said, “He stayed.” This answer had felt insufficient. Now it feels statistically persuasive. Marriage, the potato decides, is not proof of love but proof of alignment, a mutual decision to stop evaluating alternatives. He had not been ready for that. This does not make him wrong. It makes him earlier in his process. The cellar accepts this without commentary.
Existence begins to feel less like a problem to solve and more like a condition to manage. The potato does not feel enlightened. He feels operational. Some silences hurt less with repetition. Some thoughts lose their sharpness when you stop polishing them. The girlfriend is married. The relationship is complete. The lesson has been delivered and does not require further annotation.
He lies still. Almost thirty. Not broken. Not triumphant. Not resolved. The cellar remains cool and patient. His parents lean into each other nearby. The younger potato breathes softly. The spider adjusts its web. Time thickens. Silence waits.
The potato rolls slightly.
He encounters space.
“Oh,” he says.
And the silence, once again, stops feeling temporary and starts feeling intentional.
