excerpt 0346

even with the clouds, the angle of light coming in the window is stark against the dark back wall of the apartment, the room is too full of furniture in the haphazard way she collects stuff, with no real notion of decor the pieces bump up against each other in the eye, a running line that the eye moves over, jumping this way and that, makes my head hurt. and under foot the occasional pile of clothes, dropped where she took them off, to bother with a hamper is too much work, but you couldn't really say the room is dirty, a clean sense of untidiness maybe, a disorganized, accidental way of living that speaks of energy, intuition and a sense of believable candidness towards others. "take this shirt," she would offer, "it was herman's, but he doesn't want it anymore." not that she has heard from herman recently, in fact she has been cautiously avoiding him, but in her mind, the location of the man, his absence, however prompted, however goaded into leaving he might have been, is lost in her casual giving away of the shirt that makes me think she is right, always right. "but this is herman's shirt," I still reply, cause this is me, still waiting for someone else to show up, carefully maneuvering my way closer into her life, taking the smallest step into this wilderness of clothes, furniture and windows. i glance outside, it is raining, a slow misty type of rain, with clouds stacked up, one on top of another, in a very real way mimicking her apartment, inside outside, everything is grey, tumbled, tossed around. i want to say something else, something about herman or his shirt, say something about how funny it is that the clouds outside are like her sheets on her bed, or how i feel about the uneaten muffin perched on the arm of the chair, but nothing comes out. "okay…" she draws out the vowels, arches her eyebrows, then knits them together. and then, turns and drops the shirt. "you probably would wash it, fold it on some horrible t-shirt folding machine, and return in in two weeks anyways." she moves into the hallway, the light shifting over her form, changing her. following is difficult because she doesn't have the lights on, houses are built on the notion that the lights are turned on at night, when it is dark, but architects don't seem to plan for darker days, overcast days that blend into one another, and make hallways in houses dark and dangerous.

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