Gerald Did Not Ask for a Roommate

September twenty-third. The starter is on the windowsill. I want to be clear that this was a practical decision, the counter is cold, the windowsill gets the morning light, it needed warmth, and not at all a sign that I have lost the thread of what I am doing. Gerald is four inches away from it. He has not commented.

This started, if you'll forgive the word, because I found a recipe card at the community center, tucked into the free-take pile near the bulletin board, handwritten, the kind that assumes you already know what hydration ratio means. I did not know what hydration ratio meant. I looked it up. That was eight days ago. Four of those days I was genuinely committed. The other four I have been in a negotiation with a jar of flour and water that has more opinions than I expected.

The thing nobody tells you about sourdough starter is that it is dramatic. It doubles. It smells. It requires you to 'discard' half of it every day, which sounds simple until you are standing over the sink at 7am in your cream sweater holding a spoon and feeling vaguely guilty. I have fed it. I have named it, briefly, in my head, I called it Gerald Two, and then immediately reconsidered because Gerald One was right there and the territorial implications felt complicated.

eye contact with the starter. the starter blinked first.

I do not know if I am going to bake a loaf. I genuinely do not know. The budget sheet is still on the kitchen table. The walking route is still a route I walk sometimes. And now there is a jar on the windowsill, next to the cord and the photographs and Carol's small object, slightly to one side of the arrangement, exactly like the macramé cord in 2022, not decided, just there. Gerald's vine is leaning approximately three degrees away from it. I am choosing to read nothing into this.

gerald and the starter. neighbors. not friends.