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. There are letters you read slowly because the words are hard, and there are letters you read slowly because the handwriting is unfamiliar and you keep stopping to look at the shape of it. This was the second kind. Loops where I expected print. A period after every sentence that felt very deliberate, like someone who learned to write at a time when that mattered. I know what her handwriting looks like now. That's what I kept thinking after I folded it back up and put it on the table. I know what it looks like.

Gerald and the bowl. Still there.

Gerald is doing well, for the record. The collapsed bowl is still on the windowsill. Some mornings I make coffee and stand at the counter and look at both of them and don't think anything in particular, which is a skill I'm apparently still developing. This morning I stood there longer than usual. That's all I can tell you about what I'm going to do next.

Just the mug. Just the morning.