She called from the parking garage —

She called from the parking garage —

not ready to drive yet, she said.

Still in the building.

I stood at the kitchen window

and didn't look at anything outside it.

The glass. The slight fog

in the corner where the seal

has been going for a year.

We talked for close to an hour.

At some point I heard myself say it —

something about how being fired

takes the future tense away for a while.

How the calendar goes

not empty, just —

tenseless. No next quarter.

No end-of-year.

Just the present, continuous.

Which sounds like freedom.

Isn't.

Not at first.

I heard my voice say it

and thought: where did that come from.

I've had that in me since the January

they walked me to the elevator.

All these years and I never

found the words for what those first months were —

the strangeness of not belonging

to anyone's future.

How bad that was.

How I found the ground

underneath the future

and stood on it.

How the standing,

the plain duration of it,

turned out to be worth something.

I didn't know I knew any of that

until I gave it to her

through the phone

while the corner of the glass went cold.

She said: yeah. I think I get it.

She wasn't ready to drive yet.

We stayed on the line a little.

The fog. The glass.