What did they do to earn a permanent seat in your sleep? You haven’t called them in months. Maybe years. You don’t scroll their social media. You don’t replay conversations with them during your commute. They occupy zero conscious real estate in your waking life — and yet, the moment your head hits the pillow, there they are. Same face. Same presence. Sometimes the same scene on repeat, sometimes a completely different scenario with the same unmistakable person standing in the middle of it. Dreaming about a specific person you’re not actively thinking about is one of those experiences that creates a particular kind of unease — the kind that…

She was in the middle of a grocery run when it hit her — not a thought, not a memory, but a feeling. Like someone had just walked into the room, except she was alone in aisle seven, and the person she felt was three time zones away. She called him on the way to her car. He picked up on the first ring and said, “I was just thinking about you. Like, really thinking about you.” That kind of moment doesn’t fit neatly into any category. It’s too specific to dismiss as coincidence, too personal to explain with a generic “brains are weird” and move on. When you feel…