Against the Wall, Still

September ninth. The prints have been leaning against the kitchen wall for three weeks. Not hung. Not placed. Not on the windowsill, not on the shelf above the stove, not anywhere that constitutes a decision. Just leaning, slightly apart from each other, faces out, in that stretch of wall below the shelf where nothing else lives. I walk past them every morning on the way to the kettle and every evening on the way to the window, and every time I think: tomorrow, maybe. Three weeks of tomorrows and they're still there.

I wrote one sentence in the draft folder this morning. I'm not going to reproduce it here because it's the kind of sentence that only works in private, before it knows what it is. But the gist of it was this: I'm not sure the not-placing is a failure of decision-making. I think it might be the decision. The cord sat on the windowsill for weeks in what I called a 'temporary' position before I admitted it had simply found its place by being worked around. The collapsed bowl lived on the windowsill for years before it moved to the shelf. Things seem to know where they belong before I do, and my job, if I'm honest about my job, is mostly to stop being in the way.

The prints in their current, indefinite home.

The prints are two different weights of paper, two different levels of ink coverage. The second one is less careful and more itself, I remember noticing that when I pulled it from the press. They don't quite match, which means they'd need different spots rather than a pair arrangement, which means more decisions, which is maybe why I've been very busy walking past them for three weeks. Or: they're waiting for me to stop thinking about them, which is a thing objects in this apartment have done before and will presumably do again.

The draft-folder sentence is still in the draft folder. The prints are still against the wall. September is being very patient about all of this.

The look of a person not deciding anything.