A half-used bag of charcoal

Folded over at the top and secured with a spring clamp, one bought for a bag of flour and reassigned once the original clip disappeared, it occupies the same square foot of garage floor from September through the following May. Roughly eight months of dormancy for every four of use, a ratio that would be considered wasteful in almost any other household object but goes entirely unremarked upon in this one. The bag itself states its weight as twenty pounds, though what remains is closer to eight, the briquettes settled into an uneven pile at the bottom, some crumbled to dust from a winter of being stepped around rather than stepped over. Briquettes do not spoil in any meaningful sense, which is fortunate, since this bag has now sat through two changes of the family calendar on the kitchen wall and shows no signs of being finished before a third. Each spring it is hauled out, weighed by hand, judged sufficient for one more season, and returned to the same spot on the concrete floor. There is nothing efficient about any of this. A full bag would cost eleven dollars and eliminate the annual judgment call entirely, and yet the half bag persists, not from thrift exactly, but from the same impulse that keeps a half tank of gas from being treated as an emergency: a middle amount feels, somehow, like enough.

Doreen Fitch