What launch week actually looks like

Launch week, from the inside, is less confetti than kettle steam. I refresh a dashboard more often than I care to admit, watch a modest and uneven trickle of pre-orders appear and then pause for hours, and tell myself that the pause is ordinary. The flat still needs sweeping. The shortwave still mutters in the evening. Aigerim texts a photograph of the mountains above the city as if to remind me that weather continues. It continued at forty-two degrees. The flat gave up around two and so did I, which at least meant the dashboard was not the only thing running hot.