Open
Either of you may speak. Words are placed between you at your own pace; a slow reply creates no verdict. Under the other person's last word sits one quiet affordance, say it back, and under yours, once they have, the word heard.
THE PRACTICE · TOGETHER
SKIZA
Skiza.
Skiza — from the Swahili sikiza, “listen.” The deliberate-text practice the House's Hearths and Circles run: a conversation in which a message has no status at all until the person it was placed before has said it back, and you have agreed that is what you meant.
SKIZA · THE ABSENCE
What is missing, on purpose
There is no delivered tick. No seen. No read. No typing indicator. Every messaging tool you own reports arrival, and arrival is not understanding; the report only teaches the sender to watch. Skiza removes the report. A word you place in the room carries nothing until the other person takes it up in their own words and you say: yes, that's it. Then — and only then — it reads heard. That absence is the invention.
Listen to this teaching.
Skiza — Heard, Not Seen — Upper Room Guide · Together
ONE SURFACE · TWO STATES
Two states, one room
Held
When something needs more care than an open exchange gives it, one person holds the floor. Everyone else's words gather as embers — on their own device, never sent — until the floor passes and they choose to set one in the fire. The listener's first word on taking the floor says back what they heard. The Keeper may keep the floor if every member still consents; it asks one question about your own next word and never says who is right.
TWO REGISTERS
What the House calls it, and what a plainer world would
| In the House | Plainly |
|---|---|
| the round | a turn-taking conversation |
| the floor | the turn |
| embers | the bank |
| setting it in the fire | releasing |
| ash | discarding |
| the glow | waiting words |
| heard | heard |
THE UPPER ROOM · HEARTH & CIRCLE
Where it lives
Skiza runs inside the Upper Room today — in every Hearth (two people) and every Circle (up to six). It is built to stand alone later: the same engine, a plainer register of words. Consent to the Keeper is standing, given once at the threshold and revocable by anyone, any time. Turn-based only; never clock-based — the single clock in the whole practice is the 3.5-second rise of one ember, cancellable the entire time. In the app, Skiza has its own hall: every Hearth, Well and Circle you belong to, and a door to meet one other at the Well.
Listening is the first half of every mercy.
SKIZA is a mark of Second Humanity LLC. Patent pending.