Somebody put it there. Somebody balanced it badly. Somebody walked underneath it at speed while holding a tin of paint. All I did was find the one dry patch of pavement in the entire street and sit on it.
The paint went everywhere. I was the only witness, so I became the reason.
It fell off the wall on a Tuesday with nobody in the room. I came in afterwards because it was warm near the window and the pieces were interesting and, frankly, because I like sitting on things.
They found me sitting on it. Since then the arithmetic has been mine to carry.
Not on the street. Not on the car. On the roughly forty centimetres of world that I happen to be standing in, and it follows at walking pace, and it has done this since I was small.
I have stopped running from it. Running only means arriving wet somewhere new.
Put those two in a room and something will fall over on its own schedule. I am simply the part of the story that people can point at afterwards.
A dropped set of keys. Somebody says my name in a certain tone and then feels silly about it.
The bus goes past without stopping. Two people look at each other and then both look at me.
Something expensive stops working within the hour. My presence gets mentioned in the retelling every single time.
People begin crossing the road early. Not in fear. In admin. It is easier than explaining it later.
The story stops needing me in it. It happens near a black cat now, and the black cat is not required to attend.
None of these are things I do. They are things that happen while I am nearby, which is a different sentence entirely, and nobody has ever once read it that way.
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