Mon, 17 August

CLEARED DAY, n. A day that has been formally processed and released. Not a holiday, not a rest — a day that has been signed off, drained of its appointments, and returned to the weather. The garden beds are not waiting. The chair is not waiting. The back door stands ajar the exact amount it has been standing ajar since nine o'clock, and this will not change. The frost on the raised beds is not a metaphor for anything. The sky is the colour of a document that has been closed. Nothing here has been abandoned; abandonment implies someone failed to return. This is a different thing: a day that succeeded entirely at being empty, that met all its targets, that is performing its cleared status with the flat diligence of a completed form. The body that might have sat in the chair chose not to, which is also a choice, which is also a kind of completion.