Someone has asked you for something.
Let your eyes close.
And let them be there.
Across her view.
Close enough that you would hear them breathing.
Don't build the room.
Let it be wherever this happens.
You know them.
But to be someone you would rather not disappoint.
Whoever comes first is the right one.
Take a breath.
And let it out with nothing behind it.
Again.
They have stopped talking.
The sentence is finished and sitting there.
And the room has gone quiet the way a room does when somebody's turn is over.
It's a small thing they asked for.
An ordinary favor.
About the size of a hundred you have already done.
And there is nothing in you to do it with.
You already know your answer.
It didn't take any thinking.
It was there before they got to the end of it.
Somewhere around the middle.
While you were still nodding.
Find it.
It's in you right now.
Lower than thought.
A settled thing under the ribs.
That has already decided and isn't going to change.
It's a no.
Feel how clear it is.
Whatever else you are unsure of,
You have never once been unsure of this part.
Now feel your face.
It is already going.
Something in it has started to soften.
To arrange itself into the shape that receives the request kindly.
Your face did not consult you either.
Two things in you.
One under the ribs that knows.
One on the front of your head.
Already moving the other way.
Between them,
A pause.
Out in the room it is nothing.
A second.
Maybe less.
Not long enough for anyone to notice you took it.
And here it is in a second.
We are going to stay in it.
They stay where they are.
Waiting.
With the open,
Ordinary look of someone who's just asked and expects to hear back.
And inside the paws.
Someone,
Something starts running.
It's fast.
It's always fast.
It goes by in less time than it takes to breathe in.
And you have had it in so many times you don't watch it anymore.
You only get the result.
Slow it down.
Start where it starts,
Their face.
You say the word,
And their face does something.
Watch that much.
Just the first of it.
What comes across.
Than what they say or don't.
Now let it run further out than you usually let it.
Tomorrow.
The next time they need something.
What's different after?
They are still waiting.
It is still the same second.
What are you trying to save yourself from?
Not out loud.
There is already something you are about to say out loud.
Look up at them.
Nothing in their face is braced.
They ask the way people ask.
It cost them nothing to say.
And they have let go of it already.
Sitting there waiting for you.
They aren't in the room you are in.
Whatever just ran in you.
They do not know it happened.
It isn't in the air between you.
It never has been.
You have been keeping this whole second open by yourself.
And you do not know if it's true.
You have never found out.
You have carried that ending a long time.
And you have never once let it play with a real person.
To see what it actually does.
Everything you know about what a no costs you learned in here.
And when you say it,
They will take it as a yes.
They will be glad.
Nothing about it will tell them what it was.
Or that there was ever a second here at all.
The second is still open.
It is the only place the thing under your ribs has ever been allowed to be.
It has been living in the gap.
For as long as you can remember.
Never once out in the room.
You are going to close it.
You know how.
Your face is most of the way there already.
Whatever you say,
You will say it out there.
Come back to your own mouth.
Closed and nothing in it.
Air on your face.
Cooler on your lips than anywhere.
Follow it back along the jaw.
To the hinge of it under the ear.
Resting shut.
No one here is waiting on you.
The second is yours.
Than your weight.
Going down through you into the floor.
Everything that can go down,
Goes down.
But your eyes opened.
It's still under your ribs.
