INTERVAL, n. The space between two objects on a desk, measured not in centimetres but in what was almost begun. A gap that is not absence but held breath. The interval is where the sentence stopped before it knew what it was trying to say, where the pen rested on the paper's edge like a hand on a door handle, deciding. In music, the interval gives the note its meaning. Here it gives the afternoon its shape. The sparrow on the sill understands this: it, too, is between — between inside and outside, between looking and flying — and it is not moving yet.