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MARGARET

The basil has bolted.

Margaret comes most mornings, around ten. She has been coming four years, give or take; I’d round down. I know her by the wing. One feather sticks out at the angle of a cracked finger; the others are flat. I know her best by the place above her foot where the skin shows pink through the feathering.

I have, three or four times, opened the window very slowly. I have, once or twice, said her name.

Most apartments in the building use a comma.

The buzzer downstairs has said BARNES / LANG. Wesley is Barnes. I am Lang. The slash is a thing I made with a black pen. Most apartments in the building with two names use a comma. A comma is the sum of two things. A slash is the relation between them. I had the pen.

W. brought me tea.

The journal is a black notebook from a stationer on Eighth. I write in the morning, with my coffee. The entries are short. They sound like the entries of a quiet, pleasant marriage.

W. had a long day.

The basil is bolting.

We watched the documentary about the mountain.

The blanket was not blue.

He knocked on my door.

Tell me what you meant to do.

I don’t remember.

In the journal that morning, the entry was already there.

W. and I sat up late. He was tired. I covered him with the blue blanket.

The blanket I covered him with was brown. The blue blanket is on my bed, where it has been since I came back from Schenectady.

On a Thursday afternoon.

I lifted the lid of it and set the lid back down and closed the drawer. The drawer was heavier in the closing than it had been in the opening.

Saw this and thought of M.

My mother is alive in Schenectady. I call sometimes, at long enough intervals that the calls have been like weather.

Last clear day, I sent her a postcard from a museum in the city. I wrote on the back: Saw this and thought of M. She sent back a letter. One feather sticking out a little, like a finger pointing at something she meant to remember.

That my mother is alive.

That my father died eleven years ago in the fall.

She has not, in eleven years, asked what I do with the dust.

You have a pigeon.

W. was unloading the dishwasher. Annie’s coming in two weeks. She wants to meet you.

She hugged him a long time at the door. Then she hugged me, briefly, and said, We have met, but I’m pretending we haven’t, so we can do this properly.

Margaret was on the fire escape. Annie was drinking her coffee.

You have a pigeon.

Yes.

What do you call her?

She watched the bird for a while and said,

That’s a good name for her.

The door has been closed since I got here.

Wesley went out for bagels. Annie and I were at the kitchen table.

She said, You were up early.

I said, I am usually up early.

I couldn’t stop.

I keep a journal.

I thought you might.

Sometimes the entries—

You don’t have to tell me.

I don’t know.

Then don’t.

I said, My mother kept me.

To her.

To my grandmother.

Yes.

I read the first sentence. I put it back.

I’m not saying anything about your journal.

I think I might go up to my mother’s for a weekend.

Annie said, Oh. That’s nice.

She set her cup down.

It’s been closed since I got here.

I said, Yes.

I want to see you.

I called my mother. There was a pause. I could hear her television in the background, her hand muting it, her hand picking up the phone in a different room.

Are you all right?

I think I’m not.

Tell me.

Then,

Why don’t you come up for a weekend?

Schenectady.

My mother was smaller.

The house was the house.

I read to him, she said.

The altar on the table by the front window. A small dish of stones from a beach in Maine.

I touched the stones.

She said,

They are warm in the afternoon.

The sun comes in.

I move them in the morning so they catch it.

I know.

I had not known.

She comes most mornings.

My mother said.

I said,

She comes, too.

We sat with this.

I keep a notebook.

I have for a while.

What do you write?

Days.

The basil bolted.

The blanket is blue.

He was tired, but the soup was good.

I hear myself looking up at the same time.

I have written it down.

I have written it down too.

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Kellan Jansen writes from the American Southwest. His work is in The Forge, BRUISER, Bending Genres, and elsewhere. Find him @MarryMeMachine on X.