A Hundred and Forty

The card is cream stock, ruled in a hundred and forty boxes, one letter to a box and a space to a box. In the first row, in faint pencil, someone has written Write something warm. It rubs off as you press.

You write. The boxes fill from the left, and at the last one you are in the middle of a word. You rub out the sentence about why you stay and put in the one about the soup. Then you take a word out of the last sentence. When it fits there is one box left over, and you leave it.

Over the chute a hatch stands open on a rack of tin cups in the blue light, an inch of water in each. Through the front window the leaves are banked to the sill. The calendar over the counter is turned to November, and in the square for the thirtieth someone has penciled Leaf season ends. Beyond the glass a leaf slides down the pane and settles on the bank.