September 8, 2026

leave it

This morning, I ransacked the bureau in my office where the Sharpies
and envelopes live and that long stapler I bought four years ago and used
exactly twice. Beside them, a bin of stickers that had lost their stick, a trio
of small notebooks. It didn’t take long before nearly everything lost its luster—
the last feet of a thin, pink ribbon, a stack of un-patterned origami paper,
a postcard from that hotel in New York with stacks of books in every room.
Now, holding the long rectangle housing a photo of the cushy lobby,
I wondered what it was, exactly, that left me giddy enough to take it. The piles
grow like small cities I hate to leave but cannot bear to love another minute.
A scatter of paper clips, loosed from their moorings, points north.