The Thursday that was only a window

Everyone else had gone, or had turned around on the path. Noah wrote that the ditch was doing ditch things, which I accept as a complete weather report. I stayed because I was already in the cellar with a list, and the rain on the glass made the long room loud in the way an empty room gets loud.

I am writing this so Friday does not become a story about a meeting. There was no meeting. There was a window, and the canal, and one light on the other bank that is not ours. If someone tells you we decided something that Thursday, they were not here.

The bulb was off when I came up. I am saying it because last spring the bulb ran for a week. The door had been pulled to, and each person assumed the footsteps they were not hearing belonged to someone still down there. The key lives on the nail. The jars on the left are not a shop. If you finish the string, you say so, the way Bas did, and you do not tuck the empty spool behind the crate where a note goes to die.

Ingrid is bringing string. It goes on the stair, not in the jar row. I have become a person who repeats the location of objects. I do not like that person, and the cellar is tidier than my patience, so the person stays.

Sara did not bring bread that night. She ate it. This is the correct use of bread when the hall is one woman and a window. I am not owed a loaf by the weather.