You wake and look for me inside the house of many sleeps. You lift the living room rug by its corner, and wonder what's become of me. You whistle in stove, rouse up an old witch made of spill-grease and smoke. You keep me inside your pocket like old worn-out spool. You wake and look, but in the morning, I'm no longer there.
Suppose it's a fantasy of unloved children -- and if I vanished from your morning, would you perhaps look for me? It is a fantasy of lost children, but what is love if not teaching you ways to love spurned children?
I sometimes think, if our parents loved us properly, we'd grow up never needing lovers, at all. You say that's naive, then remember we're not speaking, and bury me inside the cheese, again. I made everything nice and clean, but didn't notice when the vacuum sucked you up from between two tumbleweeds. When you came home, you were only a facsimile of your once-self. True self? I'm never ever at a place proper for knowing. The way people cut you off in traffic is also true self, except we strive to be kind. Strive.
I decided I no longer wanted to hear you sleeping on a whim, and snuck two knitting needles from your mother's purse when she wasn't looking, and stabbed you surreptitiously between your dinner and your tea. Neither time fatal, but enough, I thought, to teach the mortuary a lesson. If you take the wrong day off from work, you'll have to go pray on your own dime.
It's colder here than before I left.
I peer inside the house like I've been missing for a thousand years. I forgot my hat. I could never go anywhere without my hat. I'm still surprised you didn't steal it away when you noticed it lingering, to lure me back into the house, so I could once more rub your feet. I'm not really interested in things you've never given me. Perhaps this is its own trial.
I reach for the hat, and stub my toe on the door stoop, and split curses like a sailor on leave. I grab from my left a voicebox, and wake the elderly upstairs neighbors. We say if we'll ever end up like them, we'd be wistful, through gritted teeth, wondering what's come of freedom. Is freedom the same as loneliness? I make a note inside the crook of my elbow, to ask of you later.
I wait for you to hear, but the bathroom door stays shut. You recite mechanically while you shower a diatribe of unloved things in your work, but not your life, because there's no room for problem-solving when you're off-duty. You hum while having a bath, and burst into full arias to hide the self-conscious sound of hitting the bowl while pissing.
I wait, but you're only in for a quick shower now. Anticipating I'll come back for my hat and a 'by your leave', you carry on telling yourself the numbers. I remember making a risque joke on the corridor carpet. Years ago now. Except it went past you and you didn't get it, so instead, I just scrunch up the magazine article and swallow it. The nurse is calling my name.
Tonight, I'll come home, and tell you none of this.
Ordinary things happen before you go to sleep. Quite likely. Memories of things that did and didn't happen converge inside me.
