jigsaw
I sift through the box and a river of cardboard runs through my fingers. They search and feel for the edge pieces. It’s much easier to put together a puzzle when you have all the edges, of course. It gives you a sense of scale. Here the puzzle begins; here the puzzle ends. Each piece within it has a distinct Cartesian coordinate in which it must be placed. The picture on the lid will assure me of this fact.
I sift through the box and bring up a pile to inspect. One at a time, I push the pieces out with my thumb and forefinger and study the shapes and contours for a moment, full of church steeple or snowbank or window; one at a time, I let them go. They form a waterfall of particularly clumpy flour.
I sift through the box and watch the twilight outside on this calm summer’s day through the windows of the library that now sits mostly empty, a stillness pervading its cozy and cavernous rows. It’s just you, and I, and a toddler by the far corner mumbling excitedly about Kpop Demon Hunters. I look at you, with the slightest hint of a concentrated smile on your face, arranging the pieces by color into neat little categories, mapping the relationships between the blanks and tabs, flood-filling from the interior.
I sift through the box and every so often I feel the soft click of another one of your pieces fitting into place, the tilt of your head, the briefest of your nods. Is this the window on the left? The one in the center-right? It doesn’t seem to bother you.
I watch you for a moment. And then I go back
and I sift through the box
looking for the edge pieces