Nothing’s due today and nobody requires my output
or my presence at any particular hour, and the light’s doing something
with the west-side entrance that I’d miss if I was busy being productive
in the standard optimization of the afternoon — I’m not.
I’ve set the standard low today.
I walked around the block at three, no headphones and no tracker,
no stated goal, no distance logged, no pace I’m chasing after —
just the block and the neighbor’s dog and the trees in the late-autumn
wind, and my own two feet, and the particular quiet I’ll remember.
The gift I didn’t know was owed me —
unrequired, unscheduled, open.
No deliverable, no the thing that needs to get across the finish,
just this: the complete and the unlinguished.
I did one necessary thing in the morning
before the afternoon expanded.
That was enough, that was the concession
to the part of me that wants the day accounted for and measured.
I did my one thing and the rest is something that I treasure.
I’ll reach for this when the week gets weighted,
when the inbox has requirements and the deadlines are inflated —
I’ll pull from this specific quiet when I need the reset dial,
the afternoon I spent on the block in the low-stakes mile.