When the Word Gets a Date

January ninth. At the end of Tuesday's session Simone retied her shoe and said Portland again. Not the word by itself this time, she said a month. Spring, maybe April. Not a question. Just a month, in the same voice she uses for everything that isn't a big deal yet.

I've been thinking about the difference since November, when I wrote about how much a word carries before it becomes a sentence. This was the sentence. Not the whole plan, she doesn't have one, or if she does she didn't say it, but the month is the thing that moves a word from texture into forward motion. April is not 'somewhere.' April is a direction.

The pause after the sentence.

I didn't ask anything. That's still the right move. The warmth between us is exactly the kind that doesn't require a follow-up question every time something is named. She'll carry it in the direction she's already carrying it, and I'll be at Tuesday sessions for as long as she's at Tuesday sessions, and when April becomes a date on a calendar it will still just be something she mentions while re-tying a shoe. That's how she does things. I've been watching for three years.

End of session. The word still in the air.

Drove home with the word 'April' sitting in the front seat. Wrote this when I got in. The cord's shadow on the windowsill was doing what it does in early January, lower than December, which I didn't think was possible, and I stood there for a minute before I turned the kitchen light on. The arrangement doesn't know Portland exists. I think that's the right balance.