The Hour That Time Forgot
September tenth. Simone said it on a Thursday two weeks ago and I have been turning it over since: 'the hour that time forgot.' She meant the break room at 2pm specifically, and s…
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71 entries tagged #thehartwells.
Leaning
September fifth. The prints have been against the kitchen wall for three weeks. Not on the wall. Not on the windowsill. Not on the shelf above the stove, which is already doing a…
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The Egg, the Alarm, and the Step Stool
September fourth. One egg. One pan. One smoke alarm that has apparently been waiting years for exactly this moment. It was not a complicated breakfast. I have made eggs hundreds o…
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The Second Print
August sixth. The second time is different in a specific way I didn't expect: you already know where to put your hands. You already know the smell of the ink and the sound the bra…
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The Dollar and the Stare
March fifth. The vending machine in the break room took Simone's dollar on Tuesday and gave her absolutely nothing in return. Not a jam. Not an error message. Just silence and the…
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The Party That Earned Its Own Paragraph
January twentieth. There are evenings that do not need a record and evenings that insist on one. This was the second kind. Somebody's birthday, the kind of milestone that felt gen…
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The Seven O'Clock Rink
November fifteenth. Simone said 'the ice rink opens at seven' and I said yes before she finished the sentence. That was the whole decision. We were still in our work clothes, I ha…
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The Transfer Completed Successfully
November fourth. The phone told me the migration was complete and I just sat there. Both phones on the table. The new one lit up and bright. The old one doing whatever old phones…
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The Distance That Finished Itself
October thirteenth. The route is four-point-something miles. I stopped measuring it precisely sometime in 2009 because the precision was getting in the way of the point, and I nev…
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The Walk Home Was the Interesting Part
June twenty-fifth. There was a date. I went on it. It was, by any reasonable measure, a perfectly fine evening, good restaurant, easy conversation, no uncomfortable silences or mo…
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The Tea Went Cold Twice
April twentieth. Easter. I had a plan for this morning, which is always where the trouble starts. The plan was: a real breakfast. Not the usual coffee-and-whatever, but an actual…
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What the Carrying Was For
April ninth. The cord is on the windowsill. It has been there since September 2022, which is longer than I usually let a thing sit anywhere without reassigning it. The shadow it m…
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The Last Tuesday of the Year
December thirty-first. The Tuesday sessions end the same way they always do, gear returned or shouldered, the same ten seconds of standing near the exit while you decide if you fo…
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The Call Ran Long
December ninth. The apartment goes quiet in a specific way this month. Not the usual quiet, the building settles, Gerald does nothing, the windowsill holds its arrangement the sam…
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Eleven Days Is a Long Time to Think About Pasta Water
October fifteenth. The Tuesday session ended and Simone asked whether I'd gone back to the cooking class, and I said no, and I said it so easily that I didn't notice for about thr…
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The Conversation I Wasn't Supposed to Hear
October fourth. I was not planning to stay. The original plan was to pick up a coffee and walk home, the October air has that quality lately where walking feels like the right ans…
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The Coffee Was Still Hot When I Sat Down
May fourteenth. I have now been at this kitchen table long enough that the coffee has gone cold twice. I reheated it the first time. The second time I just accepted it as a condit…
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The Lanyard Was Still On
May third. The shift ended and I sat in the break room for a few extra minutes because the light through the frosted window was doing something I didn't want to interrupt. A warm…
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The Laugh Did Not Ask Permission
March ninth. The yoga class ran a few minutes long, which meant I was already behind on being tired when Simone said the thing. I don't even know how to describe what she said. It…
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He Had No Agenda
January fourteenth. A pigeon landed on my windowsill this morning and did not leave for eleven minutes. I know it was eleven because I was watching the clock on the stove, not bec…
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I Watched It Happen
September fifteenth. The sink was full because I'd been soaking a pot, which I knew, and I leaned over to grab my dish soap, which I also knew, and my phone slid out of the chest…
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The Hour Before
June thirtieth. It's 5:47 a.m. and I know that because I looked at the clock on the microwave, not because I set an alarm for it. Gerald's vine is grazing the kitchen shelf the wa…
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The Empty Box, Eventually
May seventeenth. The box has been on the kitchen shelf since December 2021, which means it has been there for a year and a half, which means I have walked past it approximately fi…
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The Third Time You Look
April fourteenth. Easter weekend. The box has been on the kitchen shelf since December, and I have opened it twice, once in January, once in early March, and both times I named on…
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What Remains
April third. I didn't plan to open the box today. It's Easter weekend, the kind of slow Sunday that arrives with a quality of permission, nothing is expected, the light comes in a…
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Seen in the Background
December fourteenth. The print sale at the framing shop ended weeks ago. I know this because Simone's Halloween photograph, the one she texted me, orange light, paper skeleton in…
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Halloween, and the Print Sale Already Passed
October thirty-first. I know it's Halloween because the building next door has a plastic skeleton zip-tied to their fire escape, which has been up since mid-month and is starting…
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The Sentence Is Still Sitting There
October twentieth. The leaves have been doing their thing for three weeks now and I keep meaning to say something about that and instead I am thinking about a sentence Simone said…
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Slightly Apart
September seventeenth. I didn't put it there on purpose. That's the thing I keep coming back to. The cord was finished, I had tied it off, and I needed to set it down, and I put i…
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The Date Passed
September sixth. The print sale at the framing shop was last weekend. I know this because Simone told me about it in August, and I put it in my calendar with the particular optimi…
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Nothing Has to Happen Next
August fifteenth. The cord has been sitting on the counter since I tied it off last month. I haven't moved it. I'm not sure what I'm waiting for, maybe just to see what it looks l…
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The Stranger Who Came Back
April twenty-seventh. Someone I know said something a few months ago about coming back to a thing after a break and feeling like a stranger in it, like the room had rearranged its…
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What It Weighs
January eighteenth. I didn't plan to open the box this morning. I'd been walking past it since December, on the counter, then on the chair by the door, then on the kitchen table,…
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Four Hours of Strategic Follow-Up
December sixteenth. It started with a paper coffee cup and the phrase 'there's someone I've been talking to,' said with the specific casualness of a person who knows what they are…
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What the Blog Already Knows
December fifth. Simone said it at the end of a shift, the way she tends to say the precise thing, almost as an aside, as if she were commenting on the weather. She'd tried to look…
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The Pigeon Had Somewhere to Be (It Was Here)
November second. He arrived at 8:14 in the morning. I know because I looked at my phone to confirm that this was, in fact, happening. He was a completely standard city pigeon, gre…
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The Photograph Stays
August twenty-eighth. The sidewalk-sale weekend at the framing shop was last weekend. I know because I had written it down, not in a calendar exactly, more the way you write somet…
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The Morning After the Draft
April eighteenth. Easter Sunday. I pressed publish at seven forty-three this morning, before the coffee had finished, before I'd done anything else. That felt intentional even tho…
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What I Drew Instead
October thirteenth. The sketchbook was under a pile of mail and a folded canvas bag and one of those community center brochures I keep meaning to recycle, and Simone found it the…
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The Earring Was Always Going to Be a Whole Thing
September twenty-first. I want to be clear that I was not the one who made us late. Simone texted around ten to say she was coming by to grab something small, I assumed she meant…
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The Room I Didn't Know Was There
April twentieth. I had been to open studio before, enough times that the sign-in sheet felt familiar, and I knew which wheel had the wobble and which shelf was for pieces still wa…
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The Name Arrives Without Fanfare
March eighteenth. Tuesday. The session was unremarkable in the best sense, a full hour on the wall, the usual complaints about the same two holds, Simone making a noise of pure gr…
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The Shape of the Absence
February twenty-fifth. Tuesday night. I came home from climbing, made tea I didn't finish, and sat at the kitchen table for longer than was strictly necessary. Not sad, exactly. T…
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The Group Chat Incident of October 2019
October twenty-seventh. I was trying to text a perfectly reasonable message about whether the climbing gym would be crowded on Tuesday, and my phone, my phone, which I trust, whic…
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From the Other Direction
January twenty-fifth. We were unlacing shoes on the bench after the Tuesday session, the usual wind-down, the part where neither of us is ready to go back out into the cold, and S…
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The Tab I Finally Closed
October seventh. I had the registration page open for six days. I want to be precise about that, because the six days is the whole story. The class itself, a Tuesday evening food…
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What the Paper Knows
April twenty-seventh. The workshop costs what it costs. I have known the number for three weeks, it was on the flyer at the gear shop, printed in small type at the bottom right co…
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What the Margin Said
April fifth. The workshop flyer has been sitting folded on the counter for about two weeks. I brought it home from the gear shop the same way I bring most things home, without ful…
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The Week That Doesn't Count
December twenty-seventh. This is the week that doesn't count. The Christmas things are still out but they've lost their charge. The new year hasn't started. Work is skeleton-crew…
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The Second Tuesday
November fifth. The shoes were the same ones. Two sizes too wide, velcro closure, the kind of rubber-soled grip that makes you feel like you are probably doing something right eve…
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One Block Over
September eleventh. The shift ended at the exact moment where staying in the building felt physically impossible, so Simone said 'coffee' and I said 'yes' before she finished the…
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The Bookshelf Stayed Downstairs
April twenty-first. Easter weekend, and I spent part of it in a hallway arguing with a bookshelf. It started the way these things always do: someone sent a message that said 'hey,…
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The Image Did Most of the Work
February fourteenth. There is a photograph on the windowsill, between the collapsed bowl and the letterpress card, that has been there since May. I placed it without ceremony and…
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Smaller Than I Remembered
February third. The photograph was never the point. I think I knew that somewhere around the second bus trip, when I got off at the stop and walked the block and stood in front of…
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The Hydrant Was There and So Was I
June seventeenth. I took the camera outside today. Not for a project. I want to be very clear about that. I had to return a library book, the branch on the next block, a four-minu…
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The Particular Stillness
February twenty-seventh. There is a thing I do with my phone when I am thinking about something I am not ready to think about out loud. I hold it face-down, or I open it and look…
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The Lobby in November
November ninth. There is a particular experience of walking into a room you already own, a class you've been to six times, a space you know by its smell and its particular tempera…
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Just a Thing I Write
There was a draft sitting in my documents folder for, I want to say a few weeks, but honestly it was longer than that. I kept opening it, moving a sentence around, closing it agai…
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What My Brain Does When the Semester Is Over
The grades are in. The final was turned in weeks ago. By any reasonable measure, my brain is off the clock. And yet. Here I am at half past midnight on the second-to-last night of…
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Who Is the Reader
There is a question written in blue pen in the margin of my returned essay. Not a correction, the instructor didn't mark anything wrong. Just a question, four words, with no quest…
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The Class That Named What I Was Already Doing
Last night I turned in my final piece for Creative Writing and then just... sat there. Didn't open the laptop. Didn't check anything. Just sat on the couch with the printed pages…
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Someone Read to the End
Here's the thing about burying a sentence at the bottom of a post: it only works if nobody gets there. I published that fall routines post five weeks into the semester and told my…
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A Name I Wasn't Expecting
Late August. The message came in through the blog contact form, which I forget exists for weeks at a time, then remember exists all at once when something actually lands in it. It…
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The Draft That Knew Before I Did
It started as a normal blog post. I sat down tonight to write something about the first Creative Writing class, you know, a recap, a little reflection, maybe a line or two about h…
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What I Actually Meant to Say
not for the blog. That's what I typed at the top of this document four months ago when I realized I was writing a mission statement for myself instead of a post. I saved it. Close…
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The Essay
I turned this in three weeks ago. Professor Alderman read it, handed it back, and said, quietly, like she didn't want to make a thing of it, that I should keep writing the real st…
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The Tab I Closed
There was a draft open in another tab for most of the semester. I'd written it in August, one of those documents where you type fast and then immediately title it 'not for the blo…
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What I Did With the Draft
There was a document sitting in a folder on my laptop, titled, embarrassingly, 'not for the blog', that I have been opening and closing since last July. Nine months. I know that b…
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The Footnote That Got Out of Hand
The post that went up today started as a footnote. I mean that literally. A few weeks ago I published that list, things I ate this week that were better than expected, very seriou…
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The One Circled Thing
The instructor handed back the first assignment at the end of class today. No fanfare, just a stack of pages face-down on the edge of the desk and a wave toward it, help yourselve…
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Seven Words and a Very Long Walk to My Car
I have been thinking about something completely unimportant for approximately four hours and I am tired. Not bad-tired. Just the specific tired that happens when your brain gets h…
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