The Echo of Empty Spaces
Reflection & Sound Design
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I watch you loop the white charging cable around your fingers, pulling it tight before dropping it into your canvas bag. You are doing everything on your own again, the way you always do when the air between us gets too thin to breathe. I am just lying flat on the mattress, tracing a hairline crack in the ceiling plaster, waiting for the hours to drain out until it is officially time to turn off the lamps. There is something unbearable about being the one person you love, yet feeling entirely useless while you pack your life into small, neat compartments. You never ask for help anymore, and I have stopped offering it.
The bedroom where we used to whisper each other to sleep feels like a place that belongs to two entirely different people now. I can see the tension in the way your jaw sets as you check your phone screen, swiping away notifications without reading them. You push any rising sadness down into the floorboards, fighting it off with a quiet, deliberate busyness. I know better than to interrupt your pacing. It is my turn to stay entirely silent, letting the heavy quiet settle over the bedsheets, pretending that if we just avoid looking directly at each other, the impending absence will somehow hurt less.
"The thought of another person’s hands smoothing down your hair... feels like a necessary, inevitable conclusion."
It occurs to me that you should leave this apartment and find someone who doesn’t make you so tired. You need someone who can sit beside you in the dark and actually ease the tense posture of your shoulders, someone who can talk you down into sleep without the exhausting baggage of our shared history. The thought of another person’s hands smoothing down your hair in a different city should feel sharp, but tonight it just feels like a necessary, inevitable conclusion. You need someone to be easy with, and lately, I have only ever been difficult.
I wonder if you lie awake analyzing the missteps, if you tally up the regrets the way I do when the headlights from passing cars stretch across the bedroom walls. Did the quiet moments we shared ever sink as deeply into your skin as they did mine? You zip the bag shut, the metallic sound tearing through the silent room, and I start repeating the phrase in my head until it loses all meaning. You will be fine. I tell it to the ceiling, to the shadows, to the empty spaces in the closet you are about to vacate. You will be just fine, and I will keep saying it until the front door finally clicks shut behind you.
the morning after the rain
I wake up and the apartment is physically lighter, as if the gravity has shifted in the night. There is a receipt for a parking ticket left on the kitchen counter, curling at the edges, and your shoes are missing from the mat by the door. I make a cup of instant coffee and stand by the living room window, watching a woman across the street struggle to fold a plastic tarp against the wind. The silence in the room is absolute, ringing softly in my ears. I do not cry, but I press my palm flat against the cool surface of the countertop, feeling the exact shape of the space you left behind, just waiting to see how long it takes for the afternoon to arrive.
the things we leave in the glovebox
Vansire
MetamodernityThe charging cable still coiled on the nightstand, the afternoon light moving slowly across the wall, and nothing left to do but wait.
Castlebeat
I FollowI kept my eyes on the door long after the sound of your footsteps had already gone quiet on the stairs.
Crumb
LocketThe silence in the room is the kind that rings — not empty, but full of everything that was just here.
The Marías
Only in My DreamsI press my palm to the countertop and stay there, not ready to find out what the evening feels like without you in it.
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