What Was Still in There

June twenty-third. I needed a measurement. That is the whole reason I opened the sketchbook, I thought I'd written something down, a width or a count, some domestic note I'd filed there instead of on my phone. I was looking for numbers.

The cord was still inside. Tucked against the spine, a little flattened where the cover had been resting on it for however many weeks. I stood there for a second longer than made sense, considering it. I hadn't forgotten it was there, exactly, it's more that I hadn't thought about it since the afternoon I put it there, which is a different thing. The macramé afternoon. Simone across the table, the instruction sheet eventually face-down, the finished row of square knots I kept without making a decision about keeping. This is what keeping without deciding looks like, apparently: a small coil of cord pressed flat inside a sketchbook, patient as anything.

The cord. Still in there.

I didn't find the measurement, for what it's worth. Probably wrote it somewhere else, or made it up, or no longer need it. I closed the sketchbook and left the cord where it was.

The look-up. When the cord made the room feel different somehow.

There's something I keep meaning to say about the things that stay without being asked to stay, and I keep not saying it because every time I get close it sounds more significant than it is. It isn't significant. The cord is just in there. That's the whole post.