Sunday at the kitchen table, radio on

Sundays I leave the radio on low — Class 95 or nothing, depending on mood. The table collects things: a mug ring, yesterday's mail, a rubber band from the vegetable stall. I peel onions slowly because there is nowhere to rush to. My mother would call this wasting time. I call it keeping the week from bleeding into itself. The view from the kitchen window is another block, closer than polite, but you learn not to look too hard. A pigeon landed on the rail. The radio played a song I did not know and will not remember. I wrote three sentences in a notebook and closed it. That counts as a productive morning.

My mother called once and I let it ring out — not from neglect, but because Sunday mornings are for horizontal thinking. She would have asked whether I had eaten and whether I was seeing anyone, and I did not have answers polished enough for voice. The missed call sat on the screen like a small debt I would repay on Monday.

By noon the onions were in the pot and the radio had moved on to advertisements. Sunday folded into itself the way it always does here — slowly, without announcement, ready for Monday whether you are or not.