You reach for the cup.

Before your hand closes around it, there is already a small ache.

Not in the cup. Not in the having. In the reaching itself.

Watch it happen the next time you want something. The wanting arrives first, and underneath the wanting is a quiet emptiness shaped exactly like the thing you are about to grab.

The pleasure, when it comes, fills that shape for a breath.

Then the shape returns, hungry again.

You thought pain was what happened when you didn’t get the thing.

It is what happens the moment you start moving toward it.

The hand that reaches is the hand that hurts. Whether it closes on the cup or closes on air.