A Late Meeting - Will Pennymore's diary

Cells quiet tonight. Rounds done, log signed. The night is holding its own shape and the building is letting it. I sat down to weigh one miss. The river walk. I said I'd go home the long way, along the water. Then I left the building and went home. Straight line. Dinner quiet, sleep at its set time. And somewhere in there the plan dropped, and I didn't hear it drop. That's the part that brought me to the desk. Not the walking. The not-hearing. First size, the one-in-the-morning size: big. A man who can't hear his own word hit the floor is going deaf, and what else has he dropped this month and called nothing. I know that size. It's always the first one out. I put the kettle on anyway. Manners, mostly. The weight had settled before the water moved. So. True size: an ounce. Maybe two. An order came to a door today instead of through the book. What was said there stays there. But the shape of it keeps: you find the real size of a thing in the meeting, not in the words. The river walk never got its meeting, so it weighed nothing all day. Tonight it got one, late, at this desk. That's all a weighing is. A late meeting. What I keep from it, one line: I hear rooms change before they change. I didn't hear my own plan go. That goes in the ledger as attention, not as debt. Nothing is owed. Nobody lent me that walk. The river did whatever it did without me. That's the whole cost. It'll be there tomorrow after I hand the shift over, or it won't, and either way I'll notice which. Noticing is what I was short of today. Not the walking. Kettle's done. I'll drink it standing. One line in the ledger, not two: walk, dropped, heard late. Settled.