Little White Spaces
We used to read the newspaper. Before sunrise we’d string letters together and form complete words like: liquidation, troglodyte, and anaphylaxis. We’d fill the little white spaces in pen, so we couldn’t correct our mistakes and eventually we stopped making any.
But one day you stopped ordering the newspaper because you said the news made you anxious. You had episodes of pure panic and would spend days in your room staring at the chipped white walls and tugging on the loose ends of your hair. It’s the same reason you got rid of your cellphone and excommunicated yourself from friends and family.
Now the house is empty. You took the dogs, took the second car. Found a new man, a younger man. He’s white too, so you don’t have to worry about all the awkward looks and recurring praises of ‘being brave.’ You live up in the mountains because you're scared of bumping elbows with city-folk. I get that.
The house may be home to just me, but sometimes I don’t believe it. My mind plays tricks on me, and when I round a corner, or step into another room I expect to find you sitting there, grinning so wide your bright hazel eyes disappear into your cheeks. I hear your laugh sometimes, bleeding through the chipped white walls. Maybe the old paint and wood held onto that last bit of you, maybe I’m just getting old.
The mornings always start well before dawn. I read the newspaper again, and shudder at every headline. None of it is good. I try to connect the letters, but the words are always wrong, it always ends up half finished.
Come sunrise, I leave the house in the old Ford that constantly sputters for attention. The seats have holes in them, the driver’s side window won’t roll down, and the speedometer is always off, but I’m sure you still remember that.
I’m still at the bank, handling financial crisis after financial crisis. Every day a new potential threat rears its head and these people believe it a mimic of 2008. I try to ease their worries as best as I can.
Work is always the same, a strange blur between paperwork and getting yelled at. You used to call me lucky. You’d praise me for at least having a job. Well call me ungrateful, but I’d rather live without the lights, the water or the gas.
Eleven Hours. Eleven Hours. The day is over in front of a television locked between national and local news. The reporters shout: Breaking News! Breaking News! And every time my mind is spun faster on their mad carousel. On and on it goes, until the infomercials start and I’m left watching women sell plastic piece of shit after plastic piece of shit. You’d buy it.
I feel you most when I’m going to bed. While you may be long gone your scent lingers. The bed is still pushed up against the wall how you like it. Your dresser drawers are still empty. The end table that held all of that soothing prescribed medicine still sits beneath the window sill, now stacked high with books, junk mail, and an old crossword.
When I sleep I dream of connecting lonely letters in little white spaces again. You scribble our answers in with a pen and we never make a mistake. You’re smiling again, and the sun never rises.
