The Risers Are Already Pulled

I haven't been to choir since the surgery, six weeks, and I tell myself I'm only stopping by to return Marge's folder. The risers are already pulled into rows when I walk in, my spot on the far left already open, and for a second I think someone left it for me out of habit.

Then I see her. New alto, younger than me, already standing exactly where I used to stand, already knows to angle the riser so the sopranos don't block the mirror. Denise doesn't even do the thing where she checks the spacing is even. She just knows.

They run the opener twice and it's tighter than it's been in a year. I count heads without meaning to, forty one, more than we've had since spring. Nobody asks where I've been. Someone hands me a folder to hold like I'm still useful for something, and I am, I hold it fine.

Marge finds me after and says we missed you, and I say something back about the surgery, the timing, and I almost say the part where I drove here already knowing the room would be fine without me and needed to see it be fine to believe it, but I ask instead if the risers are getting replaced next year, because that's a question I can stand to hear the answer to.