What the Leaning Means

September eighth. The prints have been against the kitchen wall for three weeks. Not propped with any intention, just leaning, the way something leans when you set it down to think and then forget to pick the thinking back up. They are facing out. I can see them from the counter when I make coffee. I have looked at them every morning and not moved them once.

I wrote one sentence about it in the draft folder two weeks ago and then left it there. The sentence was: 'I think I'm waiting to know where they go, but I may have already decided they go nowhere, and I'm just not ready to say so.' That is a long sentence for a draft folder. I left it anyway. It kept being true every time I checked.

The cord is still on the windowsill. The bowl is still on the shelf. The letterpress card, the two photographs, Carol's small object, all of them have the settled look of things that found their place without drama, that were worked around until the working-around became the placement. The prints don't have that yet. Or they have a different version of it. The wall is not a decision, but it's also not nothing, it's where they've been for three weeks without complaint. Maybe that counts.

Still leaning. Day twenty-something.

I closed the draft folder without publishing the sentence. Then I opened it this morning and published this instead. The prints are still there. I made coffee and stood at the window and looked at them, and then looked past them at the room, and the room looked fine. I don't know if that's an answer or just a Tuesday.

The mug. The window. The prints still doing whatever they're doing back there.