The Long Way Around a Short Answer

January twenty-ninth. It started as a yes or no question. Simone had texted about the Wednesday community center schedule, something about whether the spring session overlapped with the Tuesday climbing block, and I said come over, it'll take five minutes, I have the brochure somewhere.

Forty minutes later, the brochure was still under a library book, we hadn't looked at it once, and somehow we'd covered the outdoor bouldering morning, whether the supervisor thing had changed how I felt about Sundays (it has, quietly), and a brief but genuine detour into whether the collapsed bowl on the windowsill counts as pottery or just evidence. I didn't have a good answer for that one.

There is a specific kind of afternoon that happens in winter when you're not trying to make anything happen, when someone sits down at your kitchen table and the light just stays there, going nowhere, and the conversation does the same. This was one of those. The mug got cold. I didn't notice until I picked it up.

mid-thought at the kitchen table

We did eventually find the brochure. Simone circled something. I haven't looked at what she circled yet. I will, probably Tuesday.

the windowsill, the mug, the in-between moment