What the Hallway Returned

The hallway gave the unfinished bar back to me with less drama than I had prepared for. By the time I reached the kitchen, the only thing left to decide was whether the cup belonged in my hand or the sink.

Before breakfast, I left the laptop just inside the sitting room, pressed play, and stepped back towards the apartment door. My shoes were still beside it from last night, one sandal resting at a slight angle as if it had changed its mind after I left.

I listened once, exactly as I had promised.

From the hallway, the changed note lost some of its edges. The refrigerator hummed behind the wall. A pipe answered from another apartment. The silence in the middle was still there, but it no longer seemed to be waiting for me to praise or accuse it.

I had expected distance to make the musical choice obvious. Honest or performed. Kept or replaced. Instead, the hallway made the whole bar sound smaller, which was not the same thing as making it unimportant.

In the kitchen, morning light had reached the patterned floor. I picked up the cup I had left on the counter and held the saucer beneath it, though there was nothing left to spill. For a minute I simply stood there, barefoot, listening to the building continue without my conclusion.

This is the habit I am beginning to notice: I let one unfinished thing apply for authority over everything near it. A doubtful note becomes a doubtful morning. A pause in a song begins commenting on the cup, the light, the shoes by the door.

Today it did not get the position.

I drank the last cool mouthful, rinsed the cup, and left the demo closed. Not solved. Not abandoned. Just returned to its actual size.

The hallway had changed the scale of the question, not the answer. That was enough movement for one morning.

Tomorrow, if the day interrupts me, I want to see whether I can let it be an interruption instead of an instruction.