Dust

The ringing won’t stop and he’s heard it all before. She moans about his lack of integrity, the longing she has for different days, the hopes and dreams of that better life that she imagined herself living as that small girl curled up in her attic near the frosted windowpanes. That snow has fallen outside and blanketed the neighborhood in silence. The droning of the baseboard heaters rumbles beneath their feet, disrupts the dust-bunnies, sends them flying. The floorboards creak in the silences between her words and within his deep sighs. He looks over to the fireplace, sees the film of dust that has settled into the grooves of the bricks. The matchboxes of their favorite restaurants, the log from the last fire that was lit two years ago, the fancy dinner with white linen napkins and both of them intertwined on the couch. Sandalwood candles, darkened oak, heavy red wines, the brie from the Italian store a few blocks away, the smell of musty books. They dance through his senses and the traces of his memory bank, fall closer to the ground with her every word.

His heart screams through the backs of his eyes. The pressure builds high, he wants to save it all, sees the cards folding as she plays again, and again, and again. And it’s nothing like it used to be. Her words leak from her mouth with garbled everyday nonchalance; as if she’s said it all before a thousand times. She holds her hands in crooked, sharp positions of indifference, fingers dangling like slaughtered mackerel. Outlines the many facets of their finish line with foppish breezes of whittled facial expressions and inconsistent gestures. The wallpaper was always too yellow, he thinks, and the walls too thin. They let in the cold, release the heat, never could hold anything worth keeping. He notices it peeling in the upper right-hand corner of the room and the wallpaper glue reveals weaved webs of decline.

His patience wears pantaloons of aired consent, her words spill outwards in messy splatters. Time’s unending gaze unfolds along their trials of years untouched, gazes never met. On two separate planes, they stare inward gazes to pasts imagined, nostalgia-imbued.

The strangers waltz plainly  in the company of forgotten dust.