The Slow-Simmer Scholar

Saturday at ten you wake and don't reach for the phone. The kitchen first, four minutes grinding beans by hand (you bought an electric grinder once, used it a week, gave it to a colleague). Water down to ninety-two degrees, a slow pour through the V60, twelve minutes start to finish. The Records of the Grand Historian on the table has held the same bookmark for three weeks, because you want to pin one exact line before you turn the page. Your friends change jobs and cities and partners every year. You don't move. Asked what you've been up to, you think a moment and say, living the days carefully. Nobody sees the careful part: that you know which neighbor's plant is a fiddle-leaf fig, which subway car is always empty, the day the bookstore owner changed her hair. A last-quarter moon hangs aslant in the panes near dawn, in no rush to set. Wenqu is the quiet star over the desk. The page will still be there tomorrow. So will you.