One Line Is Enough for Now

December twenty-third. The gym closed Tuesday, which I've already written about, one line in the draft folder, the noun that arrived without ceremony. That line is still there. I've looked at it twice since then and both times closed the app. That's not avoidance. That's December doing what December does.

Simone came over this morning. Not for any reason, which is its own kind of reason. We made coffee, she sat at the kitchen table, and at some point I looked sideways at the windowsill, the cord, the arrangement, all of it in this particular winter light that keeps arriving lower than you expect. She noticed me noticing it. Then she looked at it herself, properly, the way you look at something you've only ever heard described. I didn't say anything. She didn't either.

The draft folder. The coffee. The windowsill. The same morning, every December.

I've been thinking about what it means that she named the thing plainly at the gym, subject, noun, no suspension, when her instinct all summer was to let the sentence stop before it arrived. I want to write about that. I want to write about the difference between a sentence that withholds its noun because it doesn't know the noun yet and a sentence that just says the word. But I'm not ready to write it yet, and I know I'm not ready because every time I open the draft it still just says the one line. The line knows what it is. It's waiting for me to catch up.

She'd heard about the windowsill. This was the first time she actually looked at it.

The holiday is a good place to let something sit. I've learned that. The collapsed bowl sat. The Carol letters sat. The outdoor skills workshop brochure sat for weeks before I paid for it in four minutes. One line in a draft folder on December twenty-third is not a problem. It's just where we are.