Seen in the Background

December fourteenth. The print sale at the framing shop ended weeks ago. I know this because Simone's Halloween photograph, the one she texted me, orange light, paper skeleton in a window, had the community board visible in the background, and the flyer was still pinned there, the date already past.

I didn't catch it the day she sent it. I caught it later, zooming in on something else entirely. The flyer wasn't the thing I was looking for. It was just there, in the corner of someone else's frame, doing nothing in particular after the fact.

There's something specific about that, seeing a thing through someone else's image, after the window has already closed. Not sad, exactly. Not regret. Just the particular texture of a thing that was always going to resolve itself this way: I didn't walk past it first. Simone did. I saw it because she did.

the windowsill in December light. the cord, slightly apart.

The cord is still on the windowsill. The arrangement is still the arrangement. December light is doing what December light does to everything it touches, which is make it look like it has been there for years. I think that's the end of this one.

mid-thought, facing the windowsill.