The Not-Placing

Twenty-three days. The prints are still against the kitchen wall. Not leaning dramatically, just there, at that slight angle things take when they're waiting for someone to do something about them. I walk past them in the morning. I walk past them when I come home. I have, at this point, looked at them more than I looked at anything in the framing shop the night I made them.

This morning I opened the draft folder and wrote one sentence. It said: the not-placing might be the answer. Which I know sounds like something you tell yourself when you don't want to make a decision, but I've been here before, the tab that closes itself, the class that never gets registered for, the botanical bundle that went quiet on the kitchen table and answered its own question by drying out. The prints aren't drying out. They're just leaning. And I'm not sure that's the same thing.

Still leaning. Still not a decision.

The windowsill arrangement took years to become what it is. The collapsed bowl moved off it before I understood why. The macramé cord found its place by being worked around. I don't know if the prints are looking for a wall or telling me something about what I already have. Both possibilities feel approximately correct, which is either a sign I should wait longer or a sign the draft-folder sentence already knows more than I do.

The windowsill has opinions. The prints are still waiting.

September fifteenth. The cord's shadow is doing that fall thing where it gets longer every morning. The prints are leaning. The sentence is in the folder. I'll let you know when one of them moves first.