The Week That Doesn't Count

December twenty-seventh. This is the week that doesn't count. The Christmas things are still out but they've lost their charge. The new year hasn't started. Work is skeleton-crew quiet. Gerald is doing whatever Gerald does in low light. I have been sitting near the windowsill for what feels like two hours but is probably forty minutes, and I have been thinking about dating.

Not in a spiral way. More in the way you think about a room you haven't been in for a while and try to remember where the furniture was. I have been single for, I had to actually think about this, a long time. Not tragically long. Just long in the way that becomes its own kind of normal, so normal you stop noticing it until a quiet Tuesday between holidays when the apartment is very still and you're looking at five objects on a windowsill and you realize the last time you really liked someone was not recent.

the windowsill in December. all five of them.

I don't know what I'm doing with that information. The windowsill has the collapsed bowl, the letterpress card, both photographs, Carol's small object, all five of them, same order they've been in since April. They are a complete set. I am not a complete set, which is either a problem or just a fact, and this week, in this light, I'm not sure I can tell the difference. The outdoor bouldering is in early January. Simone named a specific Saturday. I think I am going to spend the rest of this week deciding whether I am a person who is fine with how things are, or a person who is just very good at not noticing. Both seem possible.

somewhere between Christmas and January.