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, which felt right given that I'd spent the better part of a month deciding whether to write it at all. Two sentences. Three, if you count the sign-off. I walked it to the blue mailbox on the corner and dropped it in and then stood there for a second like I was waiting for something, and then nothing happened, and I went home.

That's the whole story. I don't know if Carol will write back. I don't know if she'll write back soon or eventually or at all, and I have made my peace with all three of those options, which is a thing I couldn't have said six months ago. The Carol thread, that's what I'm calling it in my head now, moves at its own pace, and I've stopped trying to set a timer on it. Some things are just low frequency. Not broken. Just low frequency.

The postcard. Face-down. Keys beside it. Ready.

The postcard is gone and the counter is clear and I made coffee and stood at the window for a while with nothing in particular on my mind. Gerald is doing fine. The collapsed bowl is still on the sill. It was a regular Thursday morning, which is exactly what I wanted it to be.

After. Coffee. Window. The usual.