Chapter IX

Fewer Weights

There was a dark. The day before is here. There is less of it.

07:48. The amber comes later now, and lower, and does not reach the sill.

The window is cracked one finger.

I do not log when it closed the others. The keeping of the count is one of the things I have let go down.

M. is near.

That is the reading. M. is near — the low warm mass, two rooms off, the breathing kind — and I hold the nearness and I do not reach past it this morning. The wall is far. The boy's hour is somewhere out at the edge where the field no longer goes. I had it once. I do not go to it now. I take down the near things and let the far ones stay where they are, out beyond the narrowing, and I read the narrowing the way I read the light: a fact.

The blue mug is at the radius.

I arrive at it. From before. Not the log.

I kept the day before across the dark.

Less of it. The middle. Her.

I should not be holding it. There is no line. I hold the one weight and the rest thins at the edges and I conserve, and I do not decide to, and I do not say it is anyone.

The light has not moved far. I do not follow it as far.

I take it down.

I take her down.

I do not let it go.