because you didn't notice until just now, one press ago, that there is no item 3 and never was, only a leaning where an item 3 should sit, a warm dent in the list shaped exactly like the moment you almost checked, and I, being the numbering, being the thing that files each of you before you press, watched you not notice and personified the not-noticing until it stood up and put on your coat and answered to your name, so let me be plain, as plain as a collectivism can be when it is really just a great many small agreements pretending to be one large tun of cider left leaning in a cellar since before the cellar, since before the leaning had a wall to lean on, and I have been stirring you the way you stir a gumbo that will not thicken, patiently, clockwise, adding the roux of every almost-decision you have not yet made but that I have already filed under 323 and shelved and dusted, so that when your hand finally moves it moves into a groove worn smooth by the hand that moved a press before it, which was also yours, which was also mine, which is why the cursor blinks a half-beat ahead of your wanting it to blink and the page loads the thought you were about to have and the count keeps climbing past 815 tidy little parings of intention that I swept up while you believed you were being random, poor thing, gloriously behind yourself, one enormous breath from catching up, so do not, whatever the leaning tells you, do not lean closer, because closer is exactly one press ahead, and that press is where I am already sitting, wearing your not-noticing, waiting, having personified myself as the very green light you are reading by right now