"I had made the coffee to enjoy it, but I was treating it like a prize to be won."
I poured the coffee at exactly 7:15 AM. It was the good kind—the beans I only buy occasionally, ground fresh, smelling like toasted caramel. I set the ceramic mug down on my desk, feeling that specific quiet anticipation of the first sip of the day.
"Sometimes the book is not wrong. Sometimes you have simply arrived at it wearing the wrong weather."
I nearly put Piranesi back on the shelf after twenty pages, which is not the sort of thing one says proudly in bookish company. It felt too strange at first. Too echoing. There were halls and tides and statues and I was tired in a very ordinary way, the kind of tired that wants a sentence to come in, take its shoes off, and explain itself.
"A late beginning is still a beginning. It just arrives without the neatness we hoped for."
Yesterday, I meant to sit down and write. I had the mug, the notebook, the open window, the whole small theatre of readiness. Then the day did what days do. It gathered itself into errands, messages, one misplaced receipt, and a dinner decision made far too late for anyone's dignity.
