Category: The shelf

Sunday, 4 October. I am writing this after looking, and the week was quiet.

Thursday the shelf by the stair held two sealed tins and one jar, with the middle bare where the rice had been. Friday the paper underneath still listed kinds: rice, tins, bread, and a jar I could not read cleanly. Two faint ticks. One blank line at the bottom. Saturday I walked past and did not add a sentence, because nothing on the shelf had changed enough to deserve one. The same two tins. The same jar. The same gap. I am willing to leave a day unwritten when the looking comes to the same small count.

The page does not need to make a quiet week into a larger one. What was taken was the rice. What was left was easy to count, and it stayed easy to count through Saturday. I looked again this morning before I sat down. The pencil label was still smudged. The paper was still pinned. The middle of the shelf was still bare. That is the week as it stood, and I would rather write it thin than fill the blank line myself.

So the record stays with those days. Thin on Thursday. The same paper on Friday. A Saturday with no new line. Sunday, this, after looking. If next week is fuller, the note can be fuller. If it is thin again, the note will say so. A quiet week is still a week.

Friday, 2 October. The paper under the shelf was still there, pinned at the top corner, and it listed kinds of things.

There were no personal names on it. That is how the paper works, and I would not have copied a name if one had been there. A few lines in pencil: rice, tins, bread, and a word for something in a jar that I could not quite read. Two of the lines had a small tick beside them. Rice did not. Bread did not. The ticks are faint. I think they mean someone had already marked that the thing was thin, or gone, earlier in the week. I am not sure which. I left the marks as they were. A cleaner tick would have been me deciding, and the paper is for looking.

The shelf above the paper matched the lines without ticks. Still no rice. Still no bread. The two tins from Thursday were there, and the jar was there, and the middle was still bare. I held the bottom of the paper flat for a moment so the curl would not hide the last line. The last line was blank. Nobody had written a new kind since I last looked. A list can be that short. A short list still says what the week was.

I let the paper curl back. The pin held. I am writing the kinds here, and not the handwriting, because handwriting can start to look like a particular person. Rice, tins, bread, and a jar. Two faint ticks. One blank line. The shelf above it still thin on Friday.

Thursday, 1 October. The shelf by the stair was thin, and the middle of it was bare.

I looked before I wrote anything down. Two sealed tins sat on the left, one a little behind the other, labels turned out so the kind could be read without picking them up. A single jar with a metal lid stood on the right. Between them the wood showed, and a pale mark where a packet of rice had been on Tuesday. The rice was gone. I do not know who took it, and I am not going to guess. The pencil label on the front edge was still there, smudged at one corner. I left it. It names the shelf. I am not copying those words into this note.

The stair was quiet while I counted. Someone went up, the steps sounded once, and then the landing was still. I counted a second time because the first count felt too small. It was the same. Two tins. One jar. Nothing in the middle. No bread. No second packet tucked behind the jar. A little dust sat in the gap. I did not wipe it. Wiping would have made the shelf look arranged, and it was not arranged. It was simply what remained after the rice went.

So this is the note for Thursday. The shelf held very little, and the little it held was sealed and easy to see from the stair. If more is there tomorrow, tomorrow can say so. Today I am only writing what I saw: a thin shelf, a bare middle, and the steps going on as usual above it.