not nine

I return to the office sharply at nine o'clock, and am greeted by the comforting sight of all of the officers working away at their designated desks, solving crimes. Charles is not there, he's not here, yet. I put an orange I had been saving upon Charles' table, and type a note on his Notepad: "I'm sorry I called you petty. I know we're supposed to be partners."

I then open the diary file we'd been working on, and type a little further: "This morning, a sack of flour was dumped in front of my door. You can't imagine how unexpected this kind of hit is to a person's psyche. You wake up, expecting to find some interesting and possibly new stuff to look into, but all you're doing is looking at flour powdered all over your doorstep. With a finger-scrawled note saying 'BAKE HER'. And it wasn't even a sack. It was a box. A box of flour that littered my doorstep at an alarmingly discomforting angle."

That's about all I have in my heart to write into the diary for now, and so I go to my own desk to check my email. Mother, this morning, is surprisingly silent. I feel I may have hurt her feelings, so I write a short note to apologize in case I had done so, and I only realize upon sending the email that I'm apologizing for sending her some email.

I have to go to a seminar at 9:30 about coping with loss. I'm not against it. Some of the personalities there are very encouraging and colorful. Unlike me. I have no color.

I open my box of crayons and begin to illustrate 'The World', as it relates to me. Everything begins to take shape. Her narrative switches to the past, and now she begins to have some proper shading.