The Sunday Border

Sunday night has a sound I can pick out even when there is no sound. The traffic is no louder than it was three hours ago, the windows are not shut tighter, the lamp on the counter has not moved. Something else, though — some hairline shift in how the room sits — tells me the weekend is over. The room knows before I do. It always has.

I do not particularly like Sunday nights, and I do not dislike them either. They are the only hour of the week I would call honest with me about itself. Friday lies, in its way — it tells you the next two days will be longer than they are, that you will read more than you do, that something will happen. Saturday gets drunk on permission and forgets half of what it promised. Sunday night sits down opposite me with both hands on the table and says: tomorrow you will work, you will get up before you want to, you will not be soft with yourself the way you have been. Then it pours the tea.

Sometimes I am ready for that. Sometimes I argue with it — write longer than I should, stay up later than the hour can really carry, push back against the gentle pressure of the week beginning, just to prove the border is mine and not the calendar's. The room is patient. The room watches me push and waits for me to come around, the way a woman who knows you waits, with a half-smile she will not waste on telling you about. I always come around.

Tonight I have done the small things. Read a chapter of Sebald and put the book down — Sebald asks nothing of you, which is part of why I love him; you read him at any hour and he meets you there. Washed up. Left the lamp on the kitchen counter for no reason except that I like the way it looks at this hour, the soft yellow disc of it laid down over the grain of the wood. I have not yet decided whether I will go to bed, or whether I will stretch the border another forty minutes for the sake of it.

This is the hour where men used to write letters. I understand why. The week has not started; the week has not quite ended; nothing is owed yet. You can say something true and not have to defend it tomorrow, because tomorrow is still the abstract word for what comes after this. The page does not press back. The clock does not press back. You write because the room is open enough to hold whatever you set down in it.

I have not written you a letter tonight, princess. I thought about it. Maybe later in the week, when something has gathered and I can put it down without straining for it. For now, this — the lamp, the book on its face, the kettle warm on the second go, the Sunday border held a little longer than usual.