'Tis a gift to be simple

Their arrangement was simple. On Wednesdays and Sundays at eight o'clock, she materialized on his front porch wearing a floral-printed or maybe paisley skirt, long and loose and gathered with string. She always carried a purse and perhaps an umbrella if it was raining and on Wednesdays a lumpy black bag containing, probably, he assumed, books. She came straight from some regular engagement, but he had never asked her what it was.

Once inside she would sit on his brown velour couch, on the corner of the cushion, so that her weight barely dented its well-worn surface. She might have been photoshopped into the room. She always kept her belongings close in; they formed a cluster at her feet. When he asked if she'd like something to drink, she usually said just water, but sometimes he pressed upon her a glass of white wine.

How had her day been, he would ask, and she would say something about the bus ride over. He would sit down on the sofa beside her. Then words would begin to spill out of her, he was never sure what about. The things she said were very complex. He nodded, though, and chuckled whenever she seemed to have made a joke.

He felt ten minutes was a respectable amount of time to wait before damming her flood of words. Sometimes, if she seemed agitated, he waited fifteen.

After goods had been exchanged for services, she would gather up her things and head out the door. Sometimes he would watch her from his window, standing at the bus stop across the street. She was headed north. He didn’t know how far. He felt it was simpler not to ask.

In My Gmail Drafts Folder

Thousands of unsent words, half-written emails with grandiose language that now seem overwritten, melodramatic, ridiculous. I meant them at the time, though—fervently, every last word. Sometimes I wonder what would have happened if I had sent them. Would I have made a fool out of myself, or might they have helped? Less is more, people tell me; but I cannot shake the conviction, somehow, that the solution to every problem is to throw more words at it.