Where the Prints Live for Now

Three weeks ago I brought two prints home from the framing shop and propped them against the kitchen wall. Not on the windowsill, there is no room there, and they are too large for it anyway. Not on the shelf above the stove. Not anywhere in particular. Just leaning.

I walk past them every morning. I walked past them this morning. There is something I keep almost doing, picking one up, holding it against a wall, taking a step back, and then not doing it. I am not sure if I am being careful or if I am just postponing the answer until the prints tell me themselves. The cord did that. The cord sat on the windowsill temporarily for weeks before it was clear that temporary was the wrong word. Maybe the prints are doing the same thing. Maybe they are not.

Three weeks of leaning.

The windowsill looks the way it always looks. The cord is in the same place it has been for three years. The collapsed bowl is on the shelf above the stove. Everything in this apartment knows where it goes. The prints do not know yet, or I do not know yet, and I am finding it difficult to tell the difference between waiting for an answer and being the answer myself.

The windowsill, which knows where everything goes.

I wrote one sentence in the draft folder this morning: The not-placing might be what I am actually publishing. I left it there. I came back two hours later and it still looked right, which is either the sentence settling or me talking myself into something. I will leave it until I can tell which.