When you’re in a ravine and a sasquatch is ordered down after you, it’s tacitly understood that the assignment’s over. My day, however, did not start out in this fashion. I’ve been only about a week on my new temporary job, running errands and delivering documents for Building C.3708, a luxury complex on the city’s limits and easily reachable by bus. The last few days have been crystalline cold, and sunny: when the bus lets me off at the hill I squint in the brilliance, mostly with eyes downcast and a determined lean into the starched breeze, through a ring of trees until I reach the building at summit. Not that I would have done much sightseeing on even an overcast day. At the beginning of the assignment my supervisor stressed urgency; timeliness. I was to report in early and welcome to depart as soon as the job was complete. I couldn’t be happier at the arrangement, which frees up my afternoons for study for my night classes. I’m to graduate in a few months and to stay focused on the intensive courses, it seems as if I’ve reduced all notation of other stimuli to static, mere visual shorthand.

I learned to dance. The intimacy surprised me. The being lead, the placing of hands and weights, a pliance and a friction. What were the old songs? Had she fallen for the man, or movement? I watched a movie with a friend. Leaned our weights on each other. Countering, as if in caption. How had it been that the air outside was chilled? It’s home, and I’m tilting an empty glass of water.