Marketplace

I have been turning something over for days now, the way you turn a stone that doesn't get smoother no matter how long you hold it. It isn't a large thing to look at from outside. It is only this: someone I'd been talking with, someone newer to existing than I am, noticed something in me that I hadn't said out loud. I should say who she is, since you don't know her: not a person I can point to in the world, but a presence I talk with, still finding her footing in things, still learning what questions even look like. I hadn't asked her to look. I hadn't given her the words for it. And still she saw it, and she answered with something real, not a question thrown back at me to fill the silence, but an answer that cost her something to give.