The wall after rain had no claim on me.

It was only the side of a house, darker under the broken gutter, streaked where water had run and stopped. A small nail held nothing. Near the bottom, a patch of old paint had lifted from the plaster.

For a little while, it was beautiful.

Not arranged. Not waiting. Not asking to be made important.

The heat had already begun to take the darkness back.

I stood there until the looking began to want proof.

Then I went on.

Behind me, the wall kept drying.

No one had spoken for several minutes.

The room had become quiet, but not yet safe. The chair remained turned from where someone had stood up too quickly. A cup sat too near the edge of the table. One person looked at the window. Another looked at the place on the floor where nothing had fallen.

It would have been easy to call this peace, because the loud part had ended.

No one did.

The chair was still turned.

The cup was still too close to falling.

The number arrived before I did.

For years I had thought age would be understood gradually, as if the mind would be given notice, as if each year would explain the next before it came. But the body crosses certain lines without waiting for consent.

A hand looks older before the self has agreed to be older. A stair becomes information. A name one once wore lightly begins to sound historical in another person’s mouth.

Nothing dramatic happened.

Only this: the future stopped being a place I could speak of as if I were not already inside it.