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Eleven days is not a long time

unless you're counting.

I wasn't counting.

I only know because I worked backward later,

standing on the third-floor landing

of a building I pass through

without ever really entering,

trying to remember

if what I felt was grief

or just the ordinary shock of wool

on a bare forearm.

A stranger's coat.

The scratch of it.

Already gone by the time I reached the bottom of the stairs,

already a thing that happened

rather than a thing happening.

People moved around me

the way water moves around a rock—

not noticing the rock,

not not noticing it either.

I thought: I should call someone.

I thought: who.