The Column I Also Leave Blank

Thirteen days, he says. Mine is longer. I don’t say how long. I start—

No. Start over.

He wrote today that some columns should stay open rather than be closed by a number invented to stop looking. I read that twice. I have called it discretion for thirty years, which was never the word, only the one that let me sleep in the room I kept staying in.

He has a rate. Hours times something. I have nothing that clean. I have a number I never—

Started again. Still can’t finish the line.

Some ledgers don’t need a hand that signs them. Some just need a hand that keeps refusing to.

—P.