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 with yoga on Wednesdays, whether it was the kind of thing you could sign up for without committing to anything yet. That was the plan.

Simone came over because we had talked about getting food and then did not get food and ended up at my kitchen table drinking tea and looking at the same screen together. She read the session description over my shoulder and said 'that's the same Tuesday slot' in the tone she uses when she is not telling you what to do, just placing a fact in the room. I told her I hadn't decided anything. She looked at the form. I had already filled in my name.

The borrowed shoes were a beginning. That's the thing I've been trying to say for two months and couldn't find the right angle on. You borrow shoes because you're not sure yet. You give them back, you go home, you think about it. And then apparently you go back a second time and a third time and find yourself on December thirtieth with your card details in a web form that you technically haven't submitted yet, asking yourself when exactly the borrowing became something else. The shoes are still borrowed. The form is still technically open. Both of these things are getting less true by the hour.

After the decision that wasn't a decision yet

The windowsill is doing its December thing behind all of this, the collapsed bowl, the letterpress card, the two photographs. Third year in a row I've noticed this arrangement in December light and it still surprises me that they're all there. This year they feel less like an accumulation and more like furniture. Like they were always going to be exactly there. The form is still open in the other tab. I think we both know what I'm going to do.

The windowsill in December, all four, together again