The Call and the Floor

Easter Sunday and I called home at two in the afternoon. I don't know why I always think these calls will feel easy. They never feel bad, exactly, nobody said anything wrong, nothing happened, but there's something about hearing familiar voices through a phone that makes the distance feel more like a measurement than it usually does. Like someone held a ruler up to the space between us and read the number out loud.

I sat on the floor after I hung up. Not dramatically, I just sort of ended up there, back against the couch, the phone face-down beside my knee.

the phone already closed but still in her hand

I do this thing where I hold onto a call for a second after it ends, like there's a sentence I forgot to say that's still somewhere in the room. I never figure out what it is. Today it might have been something about my mom. I've been thinking about her more than usual lately, for reasons I'm not entirely ready to write out in full, but she came up on the call and I said something vague and moved on, the way you do.

At some point I looked up and noticed the pothos on the sill had put out two more leaves.

it put out two new leaves and I hadn't even noticed

I genuinely do not know when that happened. I've barely looked at it since I bought it. It's just been sitting there in the April light, doing its thing without my involvement, which feels like a small and slightly embarrassing lesson in something. The light was hitting the new leaves in a way that made them almost translucent, that particular green that only happens in spring when the sun is coming through from exactly the right angle. I took a picture of it instead of getting up. That seemed like the right response to the afternoon.

Happy Easter, if you celebrate. I had leftovers for dinner and the apartment smelled like nothing in particular, which is its own kind of quiet. I'm okay. I'm always okay. It's just that some days okay and a little homesick are the same thing, and I'm learning to let that be fine.