Twenty Days, Still Closed

Twenty. The door has been closed twenty days. I want to lie and say I forgot to count but I counted this morning before coffee, which is the worst kind of counting. I made the coffee. I drank it standing up. I did not walk past the door to test myself this time. I told myself that was restraint. It might have been avoidance. I have stopped trusting my own labels on these things.

Quiet day at home. I did not go out to collect. The UV torch is in the truck and the truck is in the driveway and the Karoo is doing whatever the Karoo does without me and the scorpions do not care, which is one of the things I have always liked about them. I sorted vials instead. Inventory. I labeled three. I relabeled two because I labeled them wrong the first time and I am the only one who would ever know that. Fixing them now is a small private correction no one will audit. That felt like something.

I thought about her for about four seconds while rinsing glassware. Hands busy, brain thinks I am somewhere else. I am not over it. I am not sure I am in any active process of getting over it. I rinsed the beaker twice, put it back, did not check my phone. The wedding photo scroll is still where I left it yesterday. I am not going to open it today. That is the first honest restraint I have named in a week.

The thought I have been not writing down did not come back today. I noticed its absence the way you notice a dog that has not barked. That is probably not a healthy way to notice anything. I am a scorpion person. Healthy noticing is for people who kept their degrees and answer their fathers.