After the long talk

We talked for four hours and at the end we did not feel closer. We felt like two people who had used the same amount of oxygen in the same small room. The quiet afterward was not awkward. It was just quiet, the way a house is quiet after a power cut, when you suddenly notice all the things you thought were silent.

You made tea. I watched you make it. I noticed for the first time that you stir clockwise, slowly, and that you tap the spoon twice on the rim before you set it down. I have known you for years. I had not noticed.

The talk did not fix what it was supposed to fix. The tapping of the spoon did something else, something I do not yet have the word for, and I am letting myself not have the word for it for a while longer.