I prefer small moments.
They don’t insist.
They don’t apply for memory.
A kettle considers boiling—
not yet a decision,
just a tremor.
Light enters the kitchen
as if it had forgotten
to knock yesterday.
Coffee arrives first,
announcing nothing,
only being itself.
No one would nominate these
for importance.
They lack witnesses, applause, a date.
I used to trust larger things—
milestones with proper names,
occasions dressed for photographs.
I thought they would prove
I had been here.
They turned out to be hurried.
Or expensive in ways
no receipt could explain.
So I stand here, barefoot—
which is already a fact—
and wait
for what must happen anyway.
Because lately,
it is the smaller things
that recognize me.
A short dance occurs
between me and the floor.
No committee records it.
A chair accepts me
without asking for credentials.
We agree to call it mine.
I read—slowly—
as though time, out of politeness,
has taken a seat nearby.
Meaning is attached
the way one pins a note
to a plain surface:
not because it begged for it,
but because I won’t consent
to a blank life.
Without this—static.
With it—even repetition
learns a name.
And this,
which repeats itself so well,
becomes
something I can hold—
not because it lasts,
but because
for a moment,
I do.
Barbara Grant
