domestic almanac · paper jacket · kitchen shelf, near the salt
a year of dates that no public records keep. the third of march
is the morning the kettle was first lit in this house. the
seventeenth of june is the day the upstairs neighbour stopped
playing the piano. the second of november is the date the
cat learned to open the cupboard
under the sink. each entry is brief, one or two lines, with the
year of first observance and nothing else.
the almanac is meant to be added to —
the last forty pages are left blank, ruled into the same months
— and most copies carry a private layer in pencil. the
publisher's own copy, lodged in the reading
room, is densely marked through to the end of december.
every printing carries a small note inside the front cover: that
no anniversary is too small, that the calendar holds the date you
forgot to mark, and that the years
themselves can be left unnumbered.
marginalia · ink, in two hands she added the day we met. he added the day we didn't meet — a fortnight earlier, in the wrong city, when we did not yet know each other to miss.