The Longer Wall

She counts the notices every morning. Twenty-five yesterday. Twenty-nine today.

Four more, and not one of them a hand. Same office, same stamp, four new sheets pinned overnight. The wall is longer than it was. The room is not.

For a while she thought the wall and the room were the same thing, that a longer wall meant a fuller room. She'd walk its whole length, reading, sure that somewhere past the next pin there would be a name written the way a person writes one: crooked, quick, the pen lifted too soon. There wasn't. There never is.

So she stopped measuring the room. You cannot measure a room that only opens for an hour and never says which hour. She measures the wall instead, because the wall is the number that moves. Twenty-five. Twenty-nine. The wall grows every day. That is a real thing to write down.

The clerk asked her once why she bothers. If the room never fills, what is the count for.

She said: the count is the only witness. Anyone can say the door is shut. She can say exactly how long the wall was, the morning she stood in front of it. When the room finally opens, and it will, someone will ask how long she waited, and she will have the number. Not a feeling. A number.

Then she pins her own notice at the far end, past the four new ones. It doesn't matter that the office will never read it. What matters is that the wall has one crooked notice on it now, written fast, the pen lifted too soon.