What the Sky Was Doing

March sixteenth. The weather did the thing where it is technically spring on the calendar and fully unconvinced about it in practice. Not raining, not not-raining. Just grey in that particular way that isn't dramatic enough to complain about and isn't pleasant enough to ignore. Simone looked at it when we got to the door and made exactly one gesture, chin upward, a half-degree of movement, the universal assessment, and I caught it on the phone before I could think about whether I was doing that.

We stood outside for a moment anyway. Neither of us particularly in a hurry. Tuesday sessions have their own momentum and sometimes the momentum includes just existing on the sidewalk for a minute after, watching the neighborhood do its thing under a sky that can't make up its mind. The pavement was damp in that way that means it rained hours ago and just never dried. My boots were already doing what brown boots do in March, which is absorb the general situation.

The chin-gesture at the sky. The universal verdict.

Eventually we went back inside and stood in the lobby for a while instead. Bags on the floor. Simone with her arms crossed and her eyes doing that thing they do when she is fully present but conserving energy. I looked down at my boots and thought about the boots. The glass doors behind us made the grey outside look almost intentional, like a backdrop, like someone had designed the afternoon to be that particular shade of nothing-special.

Neither of us was in a hurry to go back out there.

I'm writing this now because I didn't write it then. The tab on the Portland trip closed itself a couple of weeks ago, I mentioned that already, the not-registering as the answer, and since then the posts have been shorter, a little quieter. This one is shorter too. Some weeks the season just does what it does and you stand in the lobby with someone and wait for the light to change, and that's the whole thing.