QUIET
Word Count: 314
Damn but it’s quiet and you’ve barely gone up the road to the corner. Why is it so quiet? I’ve been alone in our house before. You’ve kissed me goodbye and walked out the door hundreds of times over the years but never before have you left such a silence to fill up the space in your stead.
Did you know that I nearly ran after you as you drove up the street? Did you feel the tug of my need? Did the gears shift more slowly, stick in the process before they led you away.
By morning I’m bruised with bumping into the thick emptiness that just won’t blow away, out the windows I’ve opened to their fullest, the doors, even the screens opened wide. It thickens like flour into gravy and fills my mouth with its burnt lonely taste.
Now you are here, now there, I’ve imagined your journey in miles you’re physically separated from me. In the night, I follow blue ribbons you’re trailing, always pulled just out of my reach. In the morning, I wake up holding your pillow, my body in the the curves of the mattress on your side of the bed.
The TV, the traffic, the birds and chittering chipmunks, the clomp-clomp of joggers, the whirring of bikes all try to cut through the silence which by now, has seeped out into a cloud that bundles our house. Planes fly overhead as if pulled by a string. The phone blinks and shivers but I’ve not heard it ring. The silence, the silence is all.
Day by day it goes on, grows to include uptown and down by the river. The car radio plays favorite songs I can’t hear. The dense air is keeping the wind from the leaves, the sun from hitting the ground.
Then, just as expected, you’re back and the silence fades into sound.
Once again I am pulled into personal revery by your piece – remembering distinct times where I waited in the silence of home for someone’s return.
Steve, that’s the best thing you can say to a writer who is really depending on the reader to experience a story personally. Thank you.