Ten past seven, the kettle

You're up. You've been to the bathroom. The mat is where it always was, and the flat white square isn't on it, or it is, and it's Thursday, and you'll step on it once in a minute and write a number under three others. Either way, the thing that used to happen in the second after the number settled doesn't happen, because there's no number, or because the number is one of a set and a set can't swing you.

You go and put the kettle on. It's an ordinary Tuesday. You had a curry on Saturday and you've no idea what it did to anything, and it turns out you don't need to. The jeans on the chair are the jeans you're wearing today because they're the jeans, not because a reading of your water said so. Breakfast happens because it's morning. Whoever's next in the bathroom gets an ordinary good morning and doesn't know why it's a better one than it used to be.

If you're on the weigh day, in a month or two you'll have a column of numbers, and it'll tell you something a thousand mornings never did, which is where you're actually going. Most weeks it'll say nowhere in particular, and that will turn out to be fine. If it ever says something else, it'll say it clearly and in time, and you'll decide what to do with the knowledge, as a person with a line and not a person with a mood.

If you took the break, somewhere in the fourth week you'll notice that you can't remember the last number. That's not carelessness. That's what it feels like when an instrument goes back to being an instrument.

The scale was never lying to you. It was telling you the truth about the wrong thing, every morning, in a voice you couldn't help hearing. You've stopped asking it the question it couldn't answer. That's the whole change, and it's enough.

One action, before tomorrow. Choose. The weigh day, the average or the break. Then either pick the day and put the notebook by the scale, or put the scale in the cupboard, tonight, without a last reading. The kettle can do the rest.