The Same Paragraph, Four Times

March twenty-fifth. There is a system on this table. I need you to know that. The highlighters are color-coded. There is a specific section for things I've finished and a specific section for things I haven't yet started, and the legal pad is for when I need to write something by hand to actually understand it. The system is real. The system exists.

The problem is that none of the system's parts are speaking to each other right now. The uncapped orange highlighter has been sitting uncapped for forty minutes. I have read the same paragraph, third section, left-hand page, not the right, four times. I know this because I have made a small check mark in the margin each time I've finished it, which was probably meant to be encouraging and is now its own form of evidence.

the legal pad always knows more than you do

I pushed the chair back at some point, which is never a good sign. When I push the chair back it means I've decided the problem is the distance between me and the table rather than anything else, and I'm going to solve it by sitting at a slightly different angle. It does not work. It has never worked. I do it anyway. Gerald's vine on the shelf above the stove caught the late light for a minute while I was staring past the papers, and I thought: he doesn't have to retain anything. He just grows toward whatever light exists. That felt very wise and then I realized I'd spent three minutes thinking about the plant.

paragraph four. still nothing.

I finished the section eventually. I'm not going to tell you how long it took. The legal pad does know, and the legal pad and I have an agreement about what stays between us.