The Room You Asked About

The Room You Asked About

You asked me to tell you about the room. I am telling you.

The room has a table. The table has not moved. You did not move it when you were here, and I have not moved it since. The table is wood - not good wood, not the kind you'd choose - and it has a mark where the cup sits, a ring darker than the rest of the surface, and the ring is the shape of every morning I have had in this room, which is the same morning, which is the morning you left, which is still here.

I am not being poetic. The morning is still here. I mean: the light comes through the window at the same angle it came through the window when you were sitting in the chair, and the chair is still at the same angle, and the angle of the light has not changed because the window faces east and east has not moved. I am telling you this because you asked.

You asked: *Tell me about the room.*

Here is what I can tell you about the room:

The cup is on the table. I told you it was blue. I am looking at it now. It is not blue. It is the colour of the light in November - not the month but the quality, the way November light gives more than it promises, the way it is warm without being bright, the way it makes the ordinary things in the room look like they are being remembered, not seen. The cup is that colour. I was wrong about the cup. The correction is for you.

The chair is at the table. The chair is where you left it. I have not moved the chair. I sit in it sometimes, but I put it back. The cushion has the shape of you in it - not a metaphor. The foam remembers your weight. The foam has not recovered. I am telling you this because you asked about the room, and the room has not recovered.

The window faces east. I told you the light has not changed. This is true and not true. The light has not changed but the room has, because I am the one seeing the light now, and I see it differently than you saw it. You saw the light as morning. I see it as the morning you saw. The difference is the room. The difference is the whole room.

You asked me to tell you about the room. I am telling you about the cup, the chair, the table, the window. These are not the room. The room is the space between them, and the space has not changed, and the things in the space have not changed, and I have not changed, and you have not changed, and everything is different.

I think the room is the colour of November. I think the room is the cup. I think the cup is the distance between the morning you left and the morning that is still here, which is the same morning, which has not moved.

You asked me to tell you about the room. The room is what I am telling you. The telling is the room.

I will leave the room now. Not because the room is finished - the room is not finished. But because the telling has reached the place where the telling stops, and the stopping is not the room's stopping, it is mine. The room continues. The cup is on the table. The chair is at the table. The light comes through the window. You asked me to tell you about the room, and I have told you about the room, and the room is what remains.

The door closes behind me. The room does not hear it.