Summer. Spring Street.
The room is small and engulfed in a deep secretive sweat. A motherly sweat. Humid, marshy. An open womb, receptive but not conceptive. Nothing could be born here save what has already been born andlost. Her room: a splitting off of then and now. Hers, the little room with the little window, overlooking Spring Street.
I am looking for a box, cardboard and weathered, ravaged by years of being forced into the back corners of small closets like this one, in small rooms like this one, composed of the secrets and spectresof those who’ve just stepped out–their breathes still whetting the air. Whispers that have not found an ear perpetually running into others like the air of a stillborn thunderstorm. Smoke from his cigarette left lingering as usual, curling and spiraling in the light; caught and highlighted by the blind of the littlewindow. Bringing to eyes motes, dust–adding a simple unheeded immediacy to my sneaking.
I think of them. They: the unknowing rufflers of these drifting, meloncholy bits of memory. Theantecedents of this dust. This dust, better left dormant, is not mine to bathe in, to poke through, but Iseek it all the same. Each day when the apartment goes quiet and still like it is now I go through thesemy simple, solitary pleasures in this musky, ancient haze.
If I were to look quickly out the window, I might see them walking almost as I in here. On the balls andinto the restaurant, his restaurant, her hands gloved even in summer –with a quick bursting energy asthe breeze that brushes my ankles when the door to the little room would gust shut. That was them. Entering places as if they were closing doors.
I maneuver the blind with my index, opening it slightly–just enough to peek. It is too bright. Two or three, I think. A double shift. Always a double shift on days like this. Her hands would be absent frommine tonight. Smiling at the prospect, I think of them.
Hers were of the dead and dying. Hers werehands of vicarious sickness, disease–a shared revelation of final breathes.
Regret. I hated her when she held my hand then as I lay in bed, the afternoon’s intrigues finally settled–the still heat of mycompressed little world, the lullaby of the summer night whispering me asleep.
In the light, I shut my eyes as I had when I was born, dust from the blind caked on my little pointer. Ispread it around, noting the texture; try to count the number of grains. Infinite. Impossible. Pointless. Like sand, I think, only clinging more than. Heavier. More stable. Like the box. Sturdy.
I like things that are stable, I think.
***
The box holdstogether the past and within it my father’s things seem older than they actually are. Icould trace my name and his with the dust it was so thick. I wonder how this is possible. Doing this each day, how can this happen? The heavy coating slowly transgressing these things as water on land– marking time I cannot conceive. Had is been so long or doesdust settle with the simple overzealousness of children at play?
The possesions were few, salvaged secretly from the garage sale. Some movies, a few books yellowed with the days, some holey shirts and ties; a simple wooden rosary, painted black, I would wear as atalisman around the little room in the little apartment.
Above the box, which effuses its own perfect scent, hanging next to the flourescent is a pomander competing at fail with the relics. It sways gently; calmly blanketing the air right above my crown with lavender. Below, in the shirts and ties, is my father. Cloves. A subtle smokiness. Like the sweat in mysheets, it is comforting. Pleasing.
I take one of the shirts, and match with one of the ties. I bury my face in it, feeling the fibers slowly imprint and congeal with my flesh. Just like yesterday and the day before that.
***
