Short Story: Part 2

Back in my apartment I walked around in the dark; setting my bag and keys down, getting a cup of water to wash out my mouth. I turned the tv on to bring a sense of occupancy to my living room—small and irregularly shaped. I sat down waiting for the sound to fill the room, but it more than anything washed over it leaving it as it was with now an added layer of noise; that is, somehow the sound ran at right angles to the space of the room, not filling it in but stretching out in a new, unoccupied dimension.

I opened my junk mail and even halfheartedly read some of it thinking that that was more than most people did and feeling for some reason noble about it—like it was almost, almost, less of a waste of the paper that it amused me for a few moments, provided a diversion; and it did, so it was. There was a shoebox on the couch next to me. The night before I was cleaning out my closet and throwing away everything that reminded me of her—there wasn’t much. In fact, this box was the bulk of it and, well, I didn’t throw it away. I left it for myself knowing that I wouldn’t be able to resist sorting through it and feeling bad enough to cry. I’d left myself an assignment so to speak, an emotional one—like as if I’d thought it would help if I got it out of my system—but now I felt that my former self, the me of yesterday night, was cruel (he after all didn’t read them). So I took my prescription and began opening the folded sheets of paper like clams; a bucket full of clams each holding a little memory potently balled up and preserved. I began to laugh and cry, and in a feverish state I stayed up most the night reading and rereading the clams, with the feeling of overwhelming joy that I sometimes mistake for despair. There were anecdotes lived and inside jokes referenced, and I got them all, took them all as little tributes to me; to all the considerate moments paid—to every one it felt—there was a letter addressed as reply. Every one but one, and that one was the last one; extended with full knowledge that it would never be repaid, so that it didn’t make me melancholy, and there wasn’t a moment of regret all night.