The Thing the Room Is Waiting For
August twenty-sixth. I've been standing in my apartment at odd moments, between coming home and putting my bag down, between boiling water and the kettle going off, and noticing t…
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108 entries in Storyline.
The Trailhead Was Just There
August fourth. It's been almost a month since the fourth of July and I'm only now writing this, which tracks. The lag is the blog's honest condition. I've written about this befor…
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The Hike That Didn't Get Announced
July thirteenth. Three days, which is about right. I texted Simone on the fourth without a preamble. Not 'do you want to' or 'are you free', just the name of the trailhead and a q…
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Fifteen Minutes Was All It Took
July second. The outdoor skills workshop ended around noon. Simone and I were standing in the parking lot eating the granola bars we had been saving for three hours, and she said…
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The Sentence at the End
May eighth. It started as one sentence. I had written it at the bottom of a post about something else entirely, the way Simone mentioned, just mentioned, that she had been looking…
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What the Paper Knows
April twenty-seventh. The workshop costs what it costs. I have known the number for three weeks, it was on the flyer at the gear shop, printed in small type at the bottom right co…
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What the Margin Said
April fifth. The workshop flyer has been sitting folded on the counter for about two weeks. I brought it home from the gear shop the same way I bring most things home, without ful…
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Smaller Than I Thought
March fourteenth. I wrote the new number down last night. Not in a spreadsheet, not on my phone, on the same kind of paper I've been using since 2011, the scratch-pad kind, the ki…
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What Sunday Mornings Know
November thirteenth. The call came in at eight forty-seven. I know the time because I was still holding my coffee and the screen lit up and I recognized the number and, before I'd…
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The Research I Definitely Didn't Do
October twenty-second. It was a Saturday. Simone had mentioned the outdoor bouldering spot the way she mentions things, offhand, while we were unlacing our shoes after a Tuesday s…
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Smaller Than Expected
August twenty-eighth. I showed her on Thursday. Not the published version, the working draft, the one that still had a crossed-out paragraph in the middle and a note to myself in…
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One Question
August sixth. I showed Simone what I wrote. Not the post as published, the draft. The messy one, the one I wrote two Saturdays ago with my coffee getting cold and the apartment to…
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Just Your Hands
May tenth. The question Simone asked at the end of last Saturday was a practical one: do we do this again? And I told her I didn't know yet, which was honest, and she nodded the w…
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What Your Hands Already Know
April twenty-ninth. I keep thinking about my hands. Not in a dramatic way, more in the way you think about something that surprised you by being honest. Last Saturday Simone and I…
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Three Sentences to Carol
March fifth. I have been aware for a while that I haven't written to Carol since the email exchange last spring. Not in the way where you feel guilty exactly, more like noticing a…
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The Form Was Already Open
December thirtieth. The laptop was open because I was going to check something. Just check. Whether the climbing gym ran a second-level session in January, whether it overlapped w…
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The Part Where Looking It Up Was Already the Answer
December nineteenth. I told myself I was just checking whether a second-level session existed. That was the whole premise: reconnaissance, no commitment, purely informational. The…
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The Second Tuesday
November fifth. The shoes were the same ones. Two sizes too wide, velcro closure, the kind of rubber-soled grip that makes you feel like you are probably doing something right eve…
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What the Shoes Had to Do with It
October twenty-fifth. The shoes were two sizes too wide. I know this because I stood at the rental counter for longer than was probably necessary, telling myself it was fine, and…
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August Doing What August Does
August ninth. There is a specific kind of fatigue that belongs only to mid-August, not the dramatic collapse of late July, not the restless anticipation of September, just this fl…
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Late July, Roughly
July twenty-ninth. There is a specific quality to the last week of July where everything feels slightly overdue, the heat has been here long enough to stop being interesting, the…
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What July Does When It Stays Too Long
July eighteenth. The heat this week is the kind that makes you reorganize your whole day around it, errands before nine, windows open until ten, a fan angled at the exact right co…
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Pending the Kiln
June fourth. The instructor said we'd know in about two weeks. That's the window, two weeks from the last class, give or take, depending on the firing schedule. My bowl is in ther…
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The Circle Before the Commitment
March eighth. The brochure was just sitting there on the break room counter, between the communal sugar and someone's forgotten highlighter, like it had been placed there specific…
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The Image Did Most of the Work
February fourteenth. There is a photograph on the windowsill, between the collapsed bowl and the letterpress card, that has been there since May. I placed it without ceremony and…
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Smaller Than I Remembered
February third. The photograph was never the point. I think I knew that somewhere around the second bus trip, when I got off at the stop and walked the block and stood in front of…
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What I Went Back For
January twenty-third. I told myself I was just going to walk past it. Take the bus two stops east, same as October, same late-afternoon window, and see whether the photograph I ha…
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The Geo gra phy I Already Had
Dec ember tenth. T he photograph was already on my camera. That is the part I keep coming back to. I had taken it in October, a single block of storefront s two stops east, late a…
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The Storefront I Keep Returning To
November seventh. The photograph is a dry cleaner's window. That's it. A large plate-glass front with a faded green awning, the kind of place that has probably been there since be…
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Three Frames, One Answer
August eleventh. Here is the arithmetic: three photographs, same block, same light, same gray sidewalk with the crack running diagonally across the lower left corner. I showed the…
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The Middle One
July thirty-first. Three frames. Same block. Same light, same angle, same gray concrete with the afternoon shadow cutting across it at the same place. I took them about forty seco…
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The Fire Escape Cooperated
July ninth. I had a whole internal debate about the parking meter. I want to be honest about that. We were halfway down the block, Simone had asked if I wanted to walk over to the…
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The Hydrant Was There and So Was I
June seventeenth. I took the camera outside today. Not for a project. I want to be very clear about that. I had to return a library book, the branch on the next block, a four-minu…
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The Light Was There When I Picked It Up
May fifteenth. The camera has been sitting on the shelf above the coat hooks since the workshop ended. Not hidden, not displayed, just sitting. I walked past it for six weeks doin…
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The Last Thing I Wrote About February
March twenty-first. The workshop ended last week. I keep meaning to write about that, about the actual sessions, the instructor who used the word 'frame' the way other people use…
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The Particular Stillness
February twenty-seventh. There is a thing I do with my phone when I am thinking about something I am not ready to think about out loud. I hold it face-down, or I open it and look…
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Two Minutes in the Breakroom
January twenty-fifth. There was a flyer on the corkboard. There are always flyers on the corkboard, the corkboard is a municipal landfill for notices about potlucks and shift-swap…
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What Simone Said on the Slow Tuesday
January fourteenth. The restaurant was quiet in that particular January way, not dead, just reduced. Like the city turned the dial down a notch after New Year's and hasn't turned…
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The Brochure I Didn't Throw Away
January third. I found it in my coat pocket when I was hanging the coat up, one of those tri-fold community center brochures, the kind with the slightly waxy paper and the clip-ar…
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What the Brain Does With That
November twentieth. There is a specific thing your brain does when you see someone you know somewhere you didn't expect them. It's not shock, exactly. It's more like, the room has…
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The Lobby in November
November ninth. There is a particular experience of walking into a room you already own, a class you've been to six times, a space you know by its smell and its particular tempera…
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The Particular Quality of Fluorescent Light
October eighteenth. There is a specific kind of fluorescent lighting they use in community center lobbies, not harsh, exactly, but completely uninterested in flattering anyone. It…
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I Told Her About It
September fourth. It came up sideways, the way most things do with Simone. We had thirty minutes after a shift, and the coffee shop near the corner was right there, and neither of…
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After You Mail It
August thirteenth. The postcard went out last month. I know I mentioned it, briefly, in the way I mention Carol things, which is to say sideways and without much ceremony. What I…
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What You Do With the Quiet After
July twenty-second. I mailed it Thursday. The postcard, the one I've mentioned not quite mentioning for a few weeks now. I wrote it in about four minutes at the kitchen table, whi…
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Why I Always Sit by the Windows
June thirtieth. Someone asked me a question in class today and I've been turning it over ever since. Not a hard question. Just one I didn't have a ready answer for. We were maybe…
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Two Sentences Back
May twenty-eighth. Carol's card has been on my kitchen counter for eleven days. I know it's eleven because I counted on Thursday and then felt slightly unhinged about having count…
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What the Not-Saying Sounds Like
May sixth. We stayed for two hours. That wasn't the plan, the plan was food, a reasonable end-time, walking back to our cars without it becoming a whole thing, but then the conver…
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Four Minutes and Then You're Registered
April twenty-fifth. The brochure sat on my kitchen counter for three weeks. I kept moving it, to the edge of the counter when I needed the space, back to the middle when I felt gu…
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What Naming Someone Actually Costs
April fourteenth. Here is the thing about writing someone's name on the internet: you can't un-write it. I've known this in an abstract way for six years, ever since I put the fir…
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Technically I Did Something
March twelfth. I went to the community center for yoga on Wednesday and stayed approximately four minutes longer than necessary. Not because anything interesting happened. Because…
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Already the Same Room
January twenty-seventh. It was Wednesday. I was unrolling my mat, the same mat, the same corner of the room I always take because the radiator is warmer on that side and I am not…
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What the Comment Said, Specifically
December twenty-fifth. The apartment is very quiet in a way that is distinct from regular quiet. Christmas quiet has a different texture, fewer cars, the radiator doing its interm…
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The Username
November eleventh. There was a comment on an old post. Not the one people occasionally find, not the 'Why Did You Start It' post that Aunt Carol found two years ago, which still f…
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Two Seconds at the Coffee Cart
September sixth. She said something. That is the whole story, really, except that it isn't. We were both at the coffee cart before the Thursday shift, the one where you hand a dol…
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What I Did with the Two Seconds
August twenty-sixth. She said it at the coffee cart, which is where we say most things, the small aluminum setup near the side door, between the parking lot and the start of a shi…
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The Honey Jar, Drawn
August fifteenth. The sketchbook has been on my counter since June 2011. I have opened it approximately forty times and closed it thirty-nine of them without putting pencil to pap…
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His Name Is Marcus
July thirteenth. I was early. This is not unusual, I have a consistent problem with arriving before I need to, which I've made my peace with, mostly by treating the gap as belongi…
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The Mail Slot Makes a Sound Either Way
January thirtieth. There is a specific kind of waiting that does not feel like waiting, it feels like Tuesday. The dishes are clean. Gerald is fine. The collapsed bowl is on the w…
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Rectangles and Pie
Thanksgiving. The apartment smells like butter, which is probably the best thing an apartment can smell like at nine in the morning. I had the sketchbook out earlier, I don't know…
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Rectangles, Mostly
October arrived with the particular rudeness of a month that looks beautiful from the window and is actually cold the second you open the door. I have been inside a lot. I opened…
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The Tab I Hadn't Opened
August is doing that thing where the days feel long and slightly shapeless. I had the window open this morning, the fan going, Gerald looking aggressively unbothered on the sill n…
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July Fourth, Accounted For
The holiday landed on a Monday this year, which gave the whole weekend a slightly unresolved feeling, like a sentence that ends with a preposition. I watched some fireworks from t…
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One Page of Rectangles
It's been the kind of week where nothing happened and everything was fine. The apartment gets warm by two in the afternoon and I've been leaving the window open because the fan do…
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A Flyer and Two Strangers Who Don't Know What They Started
I wasn't going to write about this. It felt too small, the kind of thing that doesn't earn a post. But here's what happened: I took a photo of a flyer. That's it. A community 5K f…
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What Handwriting Looks Like
I read it. That's the thing I keep coming back to, the fact of having read it, more than what it said. I'm not going to quote it here. I don't think I could, even if I wanted to.…
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Two Comments, One Ordinary Post
The post I published after the honest one was about spring cleaning. I mean that sincerely, I wrote four hundred words about going through my bathroom cabinet and throwing away a…
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Pasta, Probably Tuesday
The week had a shape to it that I only noticed at the end. Groceries. A long phone call I kept meaning to return. I bought three types of pasta again, I do this, apparently, it's…
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The Tuesday That Filled Itself
It was a Tuesday. I know it was a Tuesday because I checked, after the fact, which tells you something about how the morning actually went, not like a milestone, not like a thing…
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Something Small I Put Out There
I wrote something this week. Not a recipe, not a list, not 'five things I'm loving in March.' Just, something honest. About a class I've been taking. I didn't name the class. I di…
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Just a Thing I Write
There was a draft sitting in my documents folder for, I want to say a few weeks, but honestly it was longer than that. I kept opening it, moving a sentence around, closing it agai…
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What the Clay Kept
The last Wednesday was three weeks ago now. I keep meaning to write about it and then not writing about it, which is probably its own kind of answer. Here is what I made in six se…
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New Number, Same Person
Nadia's texts come from a different area code now. I noticed that on the first one, the way you notice a new haircut on someone before you notice what they're actually saying. Her…
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The Apron Thing (And Other Things I Did Not Anticipate)
First Wednesday of January. I drove to the community center in the dark because six o'clock is basically night now, found parking without any drama, and walked through the front d…
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Who Is the Reader
There is a question written in blue pen in the margin of my returned essay. Not a correction, the instructor didn't mark anything wrong. Just a question, four words, with no quest…
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The Brochure Doesn't Have to Mean Anything Yet
Mid-November and the floor of my living room is apparently where I do my best thinking. I don't know when that started. At some point this fall I stopped making decisions at the t…
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The Brochure I Picked Up Just to Look At
November already. I don't know when that happened. The community center brochure has been sitting on my kitchen counter since sometime last week, I grabbed it when I was in there…
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The Class That Named What I Was Already Doing
Last night I turned in my final piece for Creative Writing and then just... sat there. Didn't open the laptop. Didn't check anything. Just sat on the couch with the printed pages…
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Someone Read to the End
Here's the thing about burying a sentence at the bottom of a post: it only works if nobody gets there. I published that fall routines post five weeks into the semester and told my…
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A Name I Wasn't Expecting
Late August. The message came in through the blog contact form, which I forget exists for weeks at a time, then remember exists all at once when something actually lands in it. It…
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The Room Where I Had to Show Up
I've been writing for three years. Not for school, not for anyone who was grading it, just for this blog, and for a private document I open late at night and add lines to and then…
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Two Hours I Didn't Plan For
The thing about saying yes in a parking lot is that it locks you in before you've had time to decide if you actually want to go. Nadia asked and I said yes and then we were both s…
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Her Name Took Up More Space Than Expected
Class ended at seven and I was the last one actually putting my notebook away. Not on purpose, I just had a lot of notes tonight and my handwriting got progressively worse toward…
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Her Name Is Sophie
Class ended at six-forty-five. I know because I was watching the clock, not impatiently, just in that low-level way you watch a clock when you have nowhere urgent to be and you're…
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The Draft That Knew Before I Did
It started as a normal blog post. I sat down tonight to write something about the first Creative Writing class, you know, a recap, a little reflection, maybe a line or two about h…
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What I Actually Meant to Say
not for the blog. That's what I typed at the top of this document four months ago when I realized I was writing a mission statement for myself instead of a post. I saved it. Close…
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The Essay
I turned this in three weeks ago. Professor Alderman read it, handed it back, and said, quietly, like she didn't want to make a thing of it, that I should keep writing the real st…
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The Fourth Draft Was the Last One
It went up at nine-seventeen. I checked the timestamp after. I don't know why I checked the timestamp. I've been working on this particular piece since, honestly I'm not sure. The…
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Wrong Turn, Better Route
Mile two is where I started not recognizing anything. I wasn't panicking, I know this neighborhood well enough that getting genuinely lost would require effort, but I'd taken a le…
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The Tab I Closed
There was a draft open in another tab for most of the semester. I'd written it in August, one of those documents where you type fast and then immediately title it 'not for the blo…
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Her Name Is on the Page Now
I published something tonight. It went up around nine-fifteen and I closed the laptop almost immediately, which is new for me. Usually I refresh. Usually I watch the counter like…
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The Tab I Closed on Purpose
The deadline is Friday. I have known this since sometime in July, the way you know a thing is coming and keep it at a comfortable arm's length until it isn't comfortable anymore.…
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Tuesday, 9:47pm
The cursor sat there for probably four minutes. I had the post open in the editor, the draft I've rewritten more times than I care to count, and I just, sat there with my hand on…
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What I Did With May
There's a bowl in my sink right now that had cereal in it approximately forty-five minutes ago. That was dinner. I'm telling you this upfront so we're calibrated. I planted zinnia…
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What I Did With the Draft
There was a document sitting in a folder on my laptop, titled, embarrassingly, 'not for the blog', that I have been opening and closing since last July. Nine months. I know that b…
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The Footnote That Got Out of Hand
The post that went up today started as a footnote. I mean that literally. A few weeks ago I published that list, things I ate this week that were better than expected, very seriou…
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Running Alone Is a Different Sport
January 25th and I have now attempted solo running three times since the new year. Three times. The first one I wrote about already, a mile before I stopped, embarrassed, on a str…
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The Prompt That Knew Too Much
Four minutes. That's how long I sat on the concrete step outside the classroom door before I actually went in. I counted because I had my watch on and I had nothing else to do exc…
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Everything Except My Legs
I got there early. I always get there early, some reflex I can't talk myself out of, so I had about four minutes to sit on a bench in the hallway and watch other people walk throu…
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The Wrong Part Got All the Attention
I re-read the post from a few days ago this morning. Not on purpose, I was just looking for the link to share with someone, but then I kept reading, the way you do when it's your…
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The Draft I Wasn't Going to Show Anyone
I didn't plan to spend my Wednesday night doing this. It started because I wanted to re-read the farmers market post from last week, the one about the tomatoes and the woman selli…
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The Part Where You Say It Out Loud
It wasn't until I was standing at the rec center front desk, waiting for Sandra to finish initialing a clipboard, that I realized I had never actually told anyone about this face…
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Everything I Own That Might Be Worth Something
The number has a name now. I wrote it at the bottom of a notebook page last night, the actual gap, the distance between what I have saved and what I need to have before I get on a…
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The Part Where Someone Else Knew
Here's what I didn't account for: at some point, you have to tell an actual person. I've been sitting with this application, submitted, done, out of my hands, for weeks now. The w…
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The Spreadsheet That Told the Truth
It started with a blank piece of notebook paper and a pencil. No Excel, no calculator app, just columns I drew with a ruler because it felt more official that way, like making it…
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The Number I Wasn't Ready For
I opened the program's website with the same energy I've had for the last few weeks, vaguely optimistic, a little caffeinated, folder named 'actually' on my phone like I had it al…
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The Post I Didn't Mean to Write
It started because I had nothing to say. I opened a blank draft around ten o'clock, no plan, just that restless feeling you get when you don't want to watch TV but you also don't…
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Her Name Is Sophie
Her name is Sophie. That's it. That's the whole development. We found this out walking to the parking lot this morning, after the run, when she said something about the heat comin…
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