The Afternoon We Volunteered Our Backs

September twenty-sixth. It started as a quick favor, Simone's neighbor needed help moving a bookshelf and a few boxes, nothing major, maybe an hour. I had the afternoon free and Simone had already said yes and looked at me in that way that made saying no feel beside the point, so I put on clothes I didn't mind getting dusty and met her in the lobby at two.

Here's the thing about helping someone move: it is never one thing. There's always a flat-pack something, there's always an instruction sheet with one diagram that makes no sense until you've already done it wrong, and there's always a moment where you're both crouched on the floor arguing quietly and politely about which end is which. Simone is methodical about this. I am slightly less so. We arrived at the correct answer after about fifteen minutes and one unnecessary trip to check the photo on the box.

The instructions page disagreed with both of us equally.

By four o'clock the bookshelf was standing, the boxes had migrated from hallway to room, and there was dust on my left forearm that I didn't notice until I was already on the bus home. I stood next to the finished shelf for a moment before we left and had this very particular feeling, not pride exactly, more like the clean satisfaction of a thing being done that wasn't mine to do, which might be the best version of that feeling.

It's straight. We checked three times.

I've been sitting with the food photography class tab still open on my laptop. The move had nothing to do with it, but somewhere between the flat-pack hardware and the walk to the bus stop I noticed I hadn't thought about the tab once all afternoon, which is either a sign that I needed a break from my own indecision or a sign that the answer was already there and I was just letting it breathe. I haven't closed the tab. I also haven't registered. But I'm closer to knowing which of those I'm going to do.