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 punctuation, the parking lot of the community center two towns over on six consecutive Saturday mornings, but every time I sit down to do it I end up writing about February instead. Specifically about a Saturday in February when I was sitting at this table looking at a photograph of a flyer on my phone, and the particular quality of light on the screen, and how a phone screen in February looks different from a phone screen in, say, October. Colder. More interrogative. Like it's asking you something.

I notice I have a habit of writing about the container instead of the thing inside it. The light on the screen instead of the flyer. The weight of the coat pocket instead of the brochure folded into it. The way I photographed the press at the letterpress workshop before I photographed the card I'd actually made. I think I do it because the container is the part I can hold still long enough to describe. The thing inside it, the actual want, the actual decision, moves too fast. By the time I get a sentence around it, I've already either done it or talked myself out of it, and the sentence is a record of something that no longer exists in that form.

the windowsill, as it always is, Gerald, the bowl, the card

This one resolved, though. That's the thing I wanted to write down before March gets much further along. Six Saturdays. I went. I showed up each time with my phone and whatever it is I apparently needed to say about light. The instructor did not once tell me to buy a better camera, which was the thing I'd been most afraid of. Simone said 'told you' exactly once, on the drive back from the first session, and then had the grace not to repeat it.

mug in hand, laptop closed, decision made

The February light on my phone screen is gone now, the phone moves forward with me into March whether I tell it to or not. The windowsill is the same: Gerald still trailing past the bowl, the letterpress card propped where it always is. The apartment keeps its own kind of record. I just wanted to add one line to mine before the month got away from me entirely. I signed up.