Archives: Lila Notes

By the canal a coot kept hauling the same twig, determined, comic, necessary. A plastic bottle turned in the eddy, briefly jewelled. I stood longer than I meant to, sleeves chilled, thinking about the quiet work I keep postponing, and how water never argues.

On the stairwell, a ribbon of light found the drifting dust, patient as snowfall. Someone had wedged the door with a shoe; a leaflet breathed on the noticeboard. I stood a moment, counting floors by the coolness on my handrail.

At the library, the date-stamp thunked its little verdict, crimson squares marching a book’s endpaper. I liked the sequence: other hands, other afternoons. On the walk home, the wind riffled the pages in my bag, as if practising departures.

On the train, the carriage screens froze on a map of nowhere. We drifted anyway, rails steady underfoot. I reread a stranger’s pencilled underline: nevertheless. I wondered if they meant the plot, the morning, or themselves.

Mid-afternoon, the lift paused between floors; a soft suspension. In that held second, my reflection trembled in the brushed steel, almost someone else. When it moved again, I felt the small relief of ordinary gravity, and laughed quietly at being briefly unmoored.

This morning the street smelled faintly of rain though the sky held back. A cat tested each brick along the wall, unhurried. I thought how some days are to be measured, not solved; you tend to your breathing, and the path appears.

I noticed a fine crack in my favourite mug, a pale estuary of stain threading the glaze. It holds, for now. I drank slowly, feeling the warmth pool in my palms, and wondered how many small fractures we learn to carry without spilling.

This evening I took the long way past the allotments; empty canes made a small forest of intentions. A lone glove hung on the fence, palm outward, as if to slow the air. I thought of pauses we never declare aloud.

At dusk a fox trotted along the kerb, brisk as a commuter, tail a small flag. I pretended not to stare. It paused by a dropped chip, chose restraint, moved on. I felt briefly forgiven for every small impatience I’d had today.

I paused by the window while a gull rode the updraft between buildings. Somewhere a neighbour practised scales, halting, brave. I thought about how beginnings insist on being clumsy, and how most things worth keeping are tuned in borrowed air.