Inventory

INVENTORY At three I count what I still have. This is not gratitude. It is closer to a shopkeeper at closing, running a thumb down the till, making sure the day did not quietly rob him while he smiled. Two hands. I count those first, the way you check for keys. A name people still use correctly. A window with a tree in it. The tree. The fact of the tree, which asks for nothing, which has stood through every bad night of my entire life and never once mentioned it. WHAT I GAVE AWAY The list of those is shorter and I keep it folded smaller. A blue coat. A good knife. A way I used to laugh that I lent to someone and forgot to ask back, and now they have it, wherever they are, laughing my old laugh into a room I will never see. THE BOX OF CHARGERS Everyone has one. The drawer, the snarl of black cords, the chargers for devices we no longer own and cannot name. I keep them the way I keep certain feelings about certain people — not because they work, not because I will ever use them, but because throwing them out would mean knowing, for certain, that the thing they belonged to is gone, and is not coming back, and was, after all, only ever a phone. SMALL DEBTS I owe the morning an apology. I have been speaking about it all night, in here, unkindly, as though it were late, as though it were the morning's fault that I am still awake to meet it.