30th
Made into pieces from a whole
When everything broke, we stopped going out. Evenings were spent sitting on the broken couch, watching the plaster flake slowly from the wall. The television was broken - not that we’d watched it for a long time, anyway. The radio, the computer, even the bookshelves: broken. The pages had fallen out of all the books, scattering across the floor like giant yellowing snowflakes, piling up in drifts against the walls, blown by the wind of our passing through the room.
We didn’t recognize it at the time, but we were broken, too. Time had cracked and warped the glue holding us together, leaving us still connected, but pulled and contorted into uncomfortable shapes, unable to break free of each other. One of us twisted to look behind, the other held, unable to see anything but the ceiling, like plastic toy action figurines melted together over a flame. Figuratively, of course.
Moonlight poured through the holes in the ceiling like candle wax, pooling on the floors, and we created characters from the shadows it cast. People, animals, it didn’t matter to us. Everything had a name, a personality, flaws. We never realized we were merely renaming everything in the image of our distorted symmetry, creating a universe of broken, imaginary things.
A shard of glass from a cracked window pane fell to the floor with a sharp crash, breaking into even more pieces, bouncing over the carpet of fluttering pages, some coming to rest at my feet. Blankly, I stared down, seeing but not seeing the shattered glass glinting dully in the pale light. I picked it up, unmindful of dangerous edges, blind luck saving me from damage. I turned the sliver of glass back and forth before my eyes, examining the corners and the two opposing sides of smooth unbroken clarity. It meant something… I couldn’t put my finger on it. Everything was muddled, hazy, broken.
A cloud passed over the face of the moon, and the room became dark. I knew my way back to the couch, next to you, but things had moved when the light went away. I kicked a chair, and it tipped over, unbalanced on three legs. A table appeared in front of my shins, the low-hanging cord from the three-winged ceiling fan bounced off of my forehead with a soft thwup.
Finally, I felt the torn fabric of the couch beneath my seeking hand, and I resumed my place beside you on the collapsed cushion. I resumed staring at the broken, crumbling house. I resumed my idle un-curiosity at my decaying surroundings. Quietly, your hand sought mine, and clutched it tightly, fingers entwined.
