At the Door

I stood at my front door with my work bag over one shoulder and a dress I hadn’t worn to the marina before.

The bag contained the workshop estimates. I could bring them, put them under the picnic table and know they were there. I could let a question about the sale rescue me whenever somebody looked too long at Nate’s hand beside mine. I had spent years becoming a person who always had the necessary paper.

On the landing, a neighbour’s radio played through the wall. Downstairs somebody moved a box across the old bakery floor. It was an ordinary Saturday, full of other people’s errands, and mine felt absurdly difficult.

I set the bag down. Picked it up again. The strap had left a crease across the shoulder of my dress, as if work had already marked where it expected to sit.

My phone lay on the hall…