The Outer Pocket

March twelfth. The bag fell the way bags fall when you're not thinking about them, straight onto the bench, side first, outer pocket open. I was already looking somewhere else. Then I wasn't.

I want to be careful about what I say here, because I'm not talking about Simone's thing. I'm talking about what I did when I saw it: nothing. I didn't ask. I didn't lean toward it or make a face or make it something that needed a conversation right then. I just saw it, a small knotted object, the kind of thing that has a lot of decisions inside it that you can't see from the outside, and I let the seeing be enough. We packed up. She said something about the bus schedule. I said something back. We walked out into the cold.

The object in the pocket. Before I was told anything about it.

It took me a few days to figure out why that felt like the right thing. I think what I give back, when I see something before I'm told about it, is the space where the telling can happen or not happen on its own terms. I don't press it into a shape. I don't make someone hand me the explanation before they're ready. I just, hold the fact of it, quietly, and wait for it to become whatever it's going to become. That's the thing I have to offer, I think. Not the question. The room around the question.

The end of a Tuesday. Nothing announced. Everything already known.

Simone's process is hers. The object is hers. Whatever it's for or not for is not mine to name. But I'm allowed to know I saw it. And I'm allowed to be glad that seeing, without asking, is something I know how to do.