The Coffee Was Still Hot When I Sat Down

May fourteenth. I have now been at this kitchen table long enough that the coffee has gone cold twice. I reheated it the first time. The second time I just accepted it as a condition of the evening.

This is the part of the year where I remember, reliably, that I am not someone who can distribute effort evenly across a month. I know this about myself. I write about knowing things about myself on this blog with some regularity. And then May arrives and I find myself at eleven-fifteen on a Tuesday with two open notebooks and a highlighter I've been uncapping and recapping without actually using, and I think: yes, here we are again.

The windowsill is doing its thing in the background, the cord, the photographs, the card, everything in its place and completely unbothered by my deadline. Gerald is trailing further down the shelf than I remembered noticing. I looked up at some point and thought, when did that happen, and then I looked back at the notebook because I did not have time to feel things about a plant.

the highlighter and I are in a disagreement

The notes are fine. The notes are probably fine. There is something specific and almost calming about the late stage of this, when the work is already what it is and the only task left is to sit with it. I am not cramming, I would like the record to show. I am reviewing. There is a meaningful distinction and I am choosing to honor it at eleven-fifteen on a Tuesday.

table archaeology, mid-session