I Watched It Happen

September fifteenth. The sink was full because I'd been soaking a pot, which I knew, and I leaned over to grab my dish soap, which I also knew, and my phone slid out of the chest pocket of my sweater and into the water in what felt like very slow motion. I watched the whole thing. The pocket, the arc, the small splash. I did not move for probably four seconds after.

There is a specific kind of helplessness that comes from an accident you had a full half-second to prevent and didn't. Not because you couldn't, just because your hands hadn't caught up yet. I stood at the sink with my arms at my sides thinking about this while my phone sat on the bottom of the basin. Then I fished it out and did the only thing anyone does in 2023, which is put it in a bowl of dry rice and start quietly bargaining.

the scene of the crime

The phone is currently in the rice. The rice is in the bowl. The bowl is on the counter next to Gerald, who is not concerned. I made tea and did not look at the bowl for forty minutes, which is the longest I have gone without checking my phone since I can't remember when, and that part was actually fine. The screen came back on eventually. I held it for a second before I unlocked it, the way you might check something you weren't sure would still be there.

the treatment plan

I'm not going to say it was a sign. But I did stand at the kitchen window with my tea for a while and look at the windowsill arrangement and think about the forty minutes before I looked at the bowl, and how quiet the kitchen was, and how the morning version of that quiet is something I've been trying to protect since August. It turns out the evening version is just as good. Unplanned. Involuntary. Still good.