Fourteen Minutes

August twenty-sixth. My grandmother called at seven-fifteen, which is when she always calls, because she has called at seven-fifteen on Friday evenings for as long as I can remember and I think she would consider it a form of failure to stop. We talked for fourteen minutes. I know because I looked at the screen after.

After I set the phone down I sat on the kitchen floor for a while. Not because anything bad happened, nothing bad happened. It was a good call. She asked if I was eating enough and I said yes and she said you sound thin and I said that's not how sound works and she laughed, which is the whole point, which has always been the whole point. She mentioned a neighbor. She mentioned the weather there, which is different from the weather here in a way that made me feel, briefly, the specific distance between us as a physical thing rather than just a number.

standing at the counter doing nothing in particular

I've been thinking about this since I tied off the cord last month, how much of the apartment is made of things that are about other people. The windowsill. The bowl on the shelf. The two photographs. Carol's small object sitting beside the arrangement, not inside it, which still feels right. And then my grandmother's voice in the kitchen at seven-fifteen, which doesn't live on the windowsill but is still very much here. I don't know what I'm trying to say. I sat on the floor, and then I stood up, and then I stood at the counter for another minute looking at nothing, and then I started thinking about dinner.

looking toward the window, not at anything

It's enough. It always is. I just have to sit still for a bit first.