The registration office

I lost the morning to an address registration errand I had postponed until the postponement itself felt like a second job. The office opened at a civilized hour and still managed to feel like it had been awake for years without sleep. Plastic chairs, a number ticket that curled at the edge, a wall of notices in fonts that disagreed with each other. I wore black, which is my default armor, and carried a folder with every paper I could imagine being asked for and two I probably did not need.

When my number finally lit I stood at the window and slid the stack under the glass. The clerk was a woman with the expression of someone who has heard every story twice. “Where do you live? With whom? On what money?” She worked through it without looking up. Freelance writing is a phrase that lands softly in some rooms and oddly in others. Living alone is another. Her questions were not cruel. They were simply shaped by a system that prefers neater boxes than the ones I fit. I answered carefully, without charm, without apology.

There was a missing stamp, or rather a stamp that existed on a copy I had not brought in the preferred color of ink. I went down the hall, paid a small fee, returned, and watched her page through everything again as if the papers might have changed their minds. Somewhere behind me a child cried and was shushed. The radiator ticked. I thought about the draft waiting on my desk and the coffee I had not had time to make properly in the cezve.

In the end she nodded, stamped, and pushed a receipt toward me with the air of a person closing a drawer. No smile, no scolding. I said thank you and meant thank you for the ending rather than the process. Outside the air was cold and the fog had not lifted since I went in. I walked home lighter by one errand and no wiser about the machinery, only glad to be free of it for another stretch of months.