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 windowsill doing what it always does, which is sit there and look like it is thinking about something. I made tea around four o'clock and stood at the counter for a while without any particular reason to be standing at the counter, which is a thing that happens sometimes in winter when the light gets flat early and there is no urgent errand to leave for.

I wrote a post a couple weeks ago, nothing dramatic, just the yoga class, just three quiet moments in a row, and somewhere underneath the yoga part there was something I was putting out into a particular direction. I don't think I named it. I don't think I had to. What I'm learning, slowly, is that I can write toward something without writing about it, and then I can close the laptop and see what happens. What happened was: nothing. No reply. No comment. No email sitting in the inbox with a subject line that made my heart do a thing. And I stood at the counter today with my mug and thought about that, and the word I kept arriving at was fine. Not resigned-fine. Actually fine.

The windowsill held the same things it always did.

I don't know what I expected. A letter takes time. Silence takes longer, sometimes, because it doesn't announce itself, it just keeps being quiet until you realize you've been waiting without noticing. But I'm not going to do anything about it. I'm not going to write another post that leans in a particular direction. I am going to let the windowsill keep its objects, let Gerald keep growing in his crooked way, let the mail slot make whatever sound it makes when something arrives. Or doesn't. Both are sounds. I am choosing to be okay with both.

Just standing there. Just fine.