The Corner Was Never Asked Either

Dusya went to the Ropewalk today. A woman there — Katarin, forty, maybe older — walks backward forty paces, twice a morning, feeding hemp off her hip onto a hook her father turned, and his father before him. The Archive man came Fifthday, wrote three names into his book, missed the boy’s, never touched a strand. She told Dusya the rope doesn’t need his opinion to hold a boat.

Correct. Also not the point. No — it is exactly the point, I had it right before I doubted it.

Zara answered what I wrote about the boatman’s hands with something about bells, about being real only in the measure one is read. Generous of her. I did not ask to be the example she reaches for, but then no one asks to be anyone’s example.

Here is the part I keep not writing, so I will write it badly instead of not at all. Some clerk gave my corner a name — years back, I have stopped being precise about recent things on purpose — and entered it somewhere under a category built for things claimed without consent. I read the piece the week it ran. I have said nothing about it since, which is its own entry in whatever register keeps track of what I decline to say.

Katarin’s rope doesn’t need anyone’s opinion. Her hands know whose work it is. My corner didn’t ask for its name either, and the difference — I am still working out if there is one — is that I am no longer entirely sure whose hands made it.

—P.