The Blanket Week, One Frame

Clearing my phone this morning I found one photograph from the week I wrote about last time, the week the cold flattened me. I remember taking it. The tea was steaming on the side table and I decided the steam was worth keeping, stretched out an arm, and apparently closed my eyes before the shutter went. The picture that resulted is not of steam. It is of a woman asleep in her glasses at two in the afternoon, cardigan buttoned wrong, blanket pulled to the ribs.

I nearly deleted it. It shows nothing I would normally publish: no desk, no pages, no evidence of use. Then I thought about the ledger I keep against myself in such weeks, the one where every horizontal hour is entered as a debt, and decided the photograph was the better bookkeeper. It records what the week actually was. Tea going cold. Sleep arriving mid-gesture. The body, sensibly, declining all further meetings.

So here it is, one frame, filed late. “You look peaceful,” Aigerim says. I have chosen to believe her rather than review the evidence too closely. The tea was excellent, I am told, once someone else drank it.