The Pages We Folded Down
Empty Shell
Angelo De Augustine
Visual Anchor: Cinematic Texture
There is a stack of paperbacks sitting on the wooden floor near the hallway window. I spent the afternoon tracing my thumb over the deep indentations of your handwriting in the margins. You used a cheap blue ballpoint pen, pressing down so hard that the ink bled through the fiber of the page, leaving a physical scar on the reverse side. "Noise in the brain," you had scribbled next to a quiet verse about a meadow. It is strange how much of a person’s quiet desperation remains in the physical pressure of a pen.
The trail behind the house is littered with dry pine needles. Every time I walk the dog there, the sticky resin clings to the soles of my shoes, carrying the sharp scent of the woods all the way into the entryway. They found you by the lower branches, though I never asked which specific tree it was. I prefer not to know. Instead, I just look at the dense canopy when the wind moves through it, listening to the scraping of bark against bark. You were always trying to settle a debt nobody else could see, retreating further into the quiet until you simply stopped.
Six months have passed since the calendar on your desk was last turned. Yesterday, I found your expired transit card in the inner pocket of a heavy coat. Your face is printed in a small square on the plastic, forever frozen in that half-smile you gave when you were impatient with the photographer. Time is strange like that; it simply stops for you, preserving your youth under a thin layer of laminated plastic, while the rest of us continue to wake up, chop vegetables, and scrub the sink.
They say you are gone, an empty shell left behind in the dense woods, but I feel the sudden, quiet weight of you settling right here, in the empty chair across the room.
At night, I lie flat on my back and place my open palm directly against my own chest. I feel the steady, rhythmic rise and fall of muscle and bone. I slow my breathing down, matching the measured pace of a sleeping person, pretending it is the weight of your head resting there. But here, in the dark, under the span of my hand, the rhythm is steady and undisturbed.
Sweeping the Front Steps
It took six months to finally carry your overcoat to the neighborhood dry cleaners. The woman behind the counter didn't ask why the fabric smelled so strongly of damp earth and pine resin; she simply nodded and handed me a yellow paper ticket. On the walk back, I stopped at the corner market and bought a small paper bag of oranges. I peeled one on the front porch, letting the sharp citrus oil coat my fingers.
The sudden sting of the peel in a small cut on my thumb is sharp, pulling me entirely into this Tuesday evening. I leave one segment of the orange on the wooden railing, right where you used to sit, before going inside and leaving the door unlocked just a fraction longer than usual.
A Few Notes Left on the Kitchen Table
Buck Meek
"Candle"
A gentle testament to the quiet, fragile threads—like the faint scent of pine or a blue ink stain—that still bind me to you.
Nick Drake
"Place to Be"
For the long, solitary afternoons spent staring at the edge of the tree line, wishing you had found a softer place to rest.
Elliott Smith
"Between the Bars"
Finding a strange, quiet comfort in the dark living room, settling into the shadows where your memory feels the safest.
Christian Lee Hutson
"Northsiders"
Tracing the heavy indentations in your paperback margins, perfectly preserving a version of you that time can no longer touch.
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