What It Weighs

January eighteenth.

I didn't plan to open the box this morning. I'd been walking past it since December, on the counter, then on the chair by the door, then on the kitchen table, where it's been sitting for the better part of two weeks the way unread mail sits when you're not ready to deal with what's in it but can't move it somewhere you won't see it, either. This morning I sat down with my tea and the flaps were just there, and I opened it.

I didn't go through the whole thing. I took out one object. It's small, smaller than I expected, which isn't a complaint, just a fact, and heavier than something its size should probably be. The weight is the part I keep coming back to. Not in a metaphor way, or not only in a metaphor way. I mean it has actual grams to it. I held it in both hands for a while and thought about how I didn't know what material it was made of, exactly, only that it was old and that it had been held before.

the box, open

I put it back in the box. I closed the flaps. I didn't place it anywhere.

The windowsill is right there, of course. I'm aware of it the way you're aware of something you're pretending not to be looking at. The arrangement has been complete since last spring, five objects, and the gap where the collapsed bowl used to be before it moved to the shelf, and the gap itself counts, which I wrote about two years ago and believed when I wrote it. I still believe it. But I looked at the windowsill this morning the way you look at a sentence you've already finished and wonder if you were too hasty. Not regret. Just a question, sitting there in January light, not asking anything out loud.

the windowsill in January