The Shelf

Maya had decided the drawer was the problem.

It was the deep one under the window, the one that had stopped closing properly sometime last winter. Every Saturday she meant to empty it, and every Saturday the light came across the floor and she found something else to do. Today she put music on, tied her hair back and sat down on the rug with a bin bag beside her, determined.

Chargers that fit nothing. Receipts. A candle she had never lit. Instructions for a lamp she no longer owned. She threw out the receipts and kept the candle, because throwing it away felt like a decision, and she didn’t want to make any decisions before lunch.

At the bottom, under a folded scarf, was the Bible.

She knew it was there. That was the strange part. She had put it there herself, on purpose, and then let the drawer fill up on top of it until she could forget about it the way you forget a loose step on a familiar stair, right up until your foot finds it.

The cover had gone soft at the corners. A ribbon marker still hung out of the pages, holding a place she couldn’t remember choosing.

She didn’t open it.

She sat with it on her knees while one song ended and another began. Across the street, a man was carrying groceries up the steps of his building, two bags in each hand, stopping halfway to laugh at something on the phone pinned against his shoulder. She watched him all the way to his door.

What if God doesn’t want me anymore?

The question came the way it usually did: not loud, not even in words exactly. More like walking into a room and knowing a conversation had stopped when you came in.

She waited for it to pass. It didn’t. It sat with her, the way the book did.

The sensible thing was to put it back and close the drawer, or try to. The bin bag was right there. She looked at the bag, and then at the book, and found she couldn’t do either.

In the end she stood up, brushed the dust from her knees and carried it across the room. The shelf by the window held the things she looked at every day without really seeing them: a plant that was doing better than it deserved, a stack of paperbacks, a jar of loose coins. She moved the coins along and stood the Bible at the end, spine out.

Not open. Not read. Just not hidden.

The drawer closed properly after that, which felt like more of a victory than it should have.

That evening the light came low through the window the way it always did, slow and warm across the floor, and it found the shelf before it found her. She noticed. She didn’t look away.