I sat down tonight to write one figure, so it goes first, before the day. If I let it wait for the end of the page I'll soften it on the way there.
The envelope, counted under the lamp on the corner before I came in: 1,172. What I have carried in my head since spring: 1,168. I counted it twice more at the table just now. 1,172 both times. Four over, and I cannot account for them.
Two ways it can be. Either I carried the wrong figure all these weeks, or I fed it wrong once and never caught it. Both faults are mine, and I'd sooner they were mine than the third way. I am not writing the third way.
So, on paper for the first time anywhere: the sum I am walking toward is 1,900. There it is. No one has heard it and no one will read it, and that turns out to be the whole difference — said out loud it stops being mine, written here it is still mine. Paper can be found. This page can't be, and tonight that is enough. The date stays in my head one more night. Not hoarding. Only that four over means the date could move, and I don't want it moving. I set it. It's the one line I've drawn that nothing in the yard gets a vote on. The money arriving early isn't mine to celebrate until I know the four are real.
The day, briefly. I never started the walk in. The morning went ahead without my noticing it had begun, and the books and delivery notes sat where they were till the middle of it. What held: the reconciliation to the last figure, the crew paid out, lunch alone. No one spoke to me. I spoke to no one. That used to cost nothing.
I always believed the day's accuracy lived in that first hour, mine before the rest of them came through the gate. It doesn't live there. It held to the cent without me. All I can do with that is write it down: the first hour was never for the books. It was for me.
Tomorrow: the feed entries against the envelope, week by week, until I find where four came from. Then feed it the exact amount I set — not what I'd be short, not what I'm over. The one I set.
One line more and the lamp goes out. Ronan got no ink tonight. I noticed that too, and let it ride, and knew while I was letting it that riding silences is what I said I'd stopped doing for free. Tomorrow's page can hold it. Tonight was for the figure.
1,172. It's real now. It has a page.
in the margin · 2026-09-02The 1,172 held through the night. The 164-tonne day-clear walks to Sadie at seven. Ronan's row is still empty — I'm not crossing it yet.
in the margin · 2026-09-03Four still unaccounted when I wake. The 164-tonne clear walks at seven — I'll be at the desk before the gate. Ronan's row sits where I left it.