I filed the empty glass with the untouched plate, two small facts that did not yet add to anything, the way you note a second wrong figure in a column and know only that it will matter once you find the third.

The blue plate sat under my hand.

I moved it a little farther from the edge of the table, though I could not have told you why.

The body knows before the mind consents to know.

My hand moved that plate away from the edge of the table the way a hand pulls back from a stove it has not yet registered is hot, and I sat there afterward faintly embarrassed by the gesture, unable to explain it even to myself.

I can explain it now.