I left the watch where I had put it the evening before. It was an accidental decision at first. By the time I noticed the empty space on my wrist, I was already outside and didn’t feel like going back upstairs. I continued toward the corner, expecting to keep checking a screen that wasn’t there.
The gesture persisted for longer than I expected. My arm moved slightly, then I remembered. It was useful to discover how often I had been doing it without making much of a decision. Between these small, uncompleted checks, I began noticing other parts of the route.
At one crossing, a person was balancing an awkwardly long package against a wall while looking for something in a pocket. Farther along, a shop window reflected the opposite side of the street so clearly that I briefly mistook a reflection for an opening. I’d passed that window many times without paying much attention to its glass.
I still wondered how long I had been out. The numbers remained part of the run even without a device available to supply them. Sometimes I tried to estimate the time from where I was on the route. Then a bend or another person’s arrival interrupted the calculation, and I carried on with an answer that was probably only approximate.
There were familiar stretches that passed without much registering at all. I couldn’t have described every corner afterward. A few details had simply found more room in my recollection than they usually did, alongside the ordinary thoughts I had brought out with me.
Back at home, the watch was still on the table. I put down my keys beside it and tried to remember what I would usually have looked at first. That morning I found myself thinking instead about the package at the crossing. I had left before its owner found whatever they were searching for, and I briefly wondered how the rest of their journey had gone.
