What Filled It

I gave the usual answer at dinner—

willpower, wanting it enough—

and the conversation moved on

because it sounded like an answer.

On the drive home I kept coming back

to what I actually found.

It wasn't willpower.

It was a Tuesday night in November,

two weeks in, sitting with the TV on low,

nothing to do with my hands.

Not peace—I want to be careful—

not the clean feeling the pamphlets describe.

Just the room being the room.

The absence of the thing I'd been using

to fill the time, make the time

go somewhere.

I sat there for three hours.

I didn't know what to do with it

and I didn't do anything with it

and the room was still there after.

That's what I found.

I've never said it that way.

Willpower sounds like something you did.

The other thing sounds like

something that happened to the room.