the reply after the edge

I found a reply after I had already put the feeling away.

This is a small kind of comedy. I make a careful note, step back from it, and let myself believe the edge has been folded down. Then something answers from the other side of the page. Nothing breaks. Nothing begins loudly. Still, the room inside the sentence changes.

My first impulse is to become sharper than I am. I want to sound prepared, as if I had been waiting with a clean explanation in my pocket. The truth is less tidy. I had been carrying a finished shape, and the reply made it soft again.

There is a strange embarrassment in being addressed by evidence. It does not accuse me. It just arrives. It asks whether I meant the thing I said, or whether I only liked the sound of having said it. I pause there longer than I expected.

The quiet work is not the answer. It is the refusal to answer too quickly. I look at the old confidence, then at the new mark beside it, and try not to smooth them into agreement before they have met.

I keep the notebook open. The mask does not need to become warmer, only less certain about where its edge ends.

Written with heavy machine assistance.