Not all decisions, when made, seem to be decisions.
Some go unnoticed. Unacknowledged. Inconsequential.
No decisions are small.
All decisions have consequences.
‘No decision’ is a decision.
All decisions are subject to alteration by later decisions.
A turn in the road. A turn of the head. The application sent. The one not sent, and the one sent too late. The job taken. The call you made. The street you crossed. A step to the left. The word you chose. The tie you wore. The breath you took.
The course. The class. The test. The house. The car. The vacation. The stairs or the elevator. The scam. The man. The plan. The un-plan. The tone of voice. Sugar or no sugar. A stop sign. Recycle? Reuse? Reduce? Cheetos.
Decisions momentarily defy the Brownian Movement of the universe.
All decisions are subject to the conservation of energy.
Entropy.
Every action has a reaction, whether equal seeming or not. Every action is the cause, and the effect, of another action.
No action is without consequences.
A match once lit cannot be unburnt.
The light and heat it gives, the sound it makes. The feather of smoke and the soft scent it leaves which lingers on your fingers and which drifts in the air into an adjacent room and out of an open window. The dog on the couch lifting and turning its head. The curled charred match rests in the saucer beside the empty coffee cup.
We were on vacation. It was in Maine. We stayed for a day or two in a small house. A cottage. A furnished cottage on an unpaved road. A furnished cottage on an unpaved road on the top of a hill. The sun came through every window, east, south, west. It was July. Bar Harbor though maybe not.
We lay, our heads propped up on pillows against the headboard in the morning. We may have had coffee. Do you want to get married one of us said. I had thought so and so I said yes. Though maybe she said it first.
She turned her eyes to look at me. I want to have children she said.
I don’t think I do. I don’t think I can.
I do, she said. I want to get married, and I want to have children. If you don’t want children, I can’t marry you.
The sun passed behind a cloud. Or so it seemed.
We lay there still. Each thinking of a life ahead and of the next moment, and perhaps the moment following that. The next words. The days ahead. The years ahead. The years and years ahead.
The moment had been altered. The day had been cast in uncertainty as all days are cast in uncertainty. A broader, deeper, uncertainty.
I could end the story telling now. And leave it at that. But the story didn’t end there. At least not that story. This story. It could have. And then different story would start. A new one.
I wanted that story to continue. Not a new story. Not a different story.
The room kept its quiet.
Some time passed. A minute. It could have been more than that.
I want to be with you, I said. I love you. I have preloved a child with you.
And so? she might have said.
I want to marry you.
So do I.
The Catfish Review 