Three days ago I noticed the bracelet had slipped into the unknown from my left wrist where I've worn it beside the stainless blue-face quartz for the last several years. It was gone. The keeper of years was gone, leaving my drugstore watch, the keeper of hours, distinctly unencumbered, streamlined from ornament, purposeful. And though I had loved that piece (had never seen anything like it, had worn it as a thing I'd chosen for myself, a thing I'd wanted to myself, and as myself), when it was gone I was only relieved and astonished to be relieved, and when I found it in the carpet beside the bed yesterday I felt, after not watching for it at all, that it had of course found me while lying in wait, as is the habit I'd put on it. For I hadn't bought it myself, but had waited to receive it.
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