The Shed

My grandfather had a shed. My father has a garage. I have a corner of the basement where no one is allowed to put anything "just for now." It's not about the space. It's about the door. The door that closes and the world agrees to wait on the other side of it. In the shed my grandfather sorted nails. He didn't need to sort nails. He had plenty of sorted nails. But the sorting— the quiet liturgy of putting small things in their right place— was how he put himself in his. Men are not taught the vocabulary of overwhelm. So we build sheds and call it a hobby. We organize tools and call it useful. We sit in trucks in parking lots for ten extra minutes and call it traffic. But really we are resting. Really we are finding the version of ourselves that exists before anyone needs something from it. I don't want to be left alone. I want to be left alone for twenty minutes and then I want someone to knock and bring me coffee and say nothing and leave. That is the whole dream. The shed. The silence. The knock. The coffee. The understanding that needing space is not the same as needing distance. My grandfather died in his shed. Heart attack. Among the sorted nails. And I like to think he was finally exactly where he wanted to be— alone, organized, at peace.