The house is Haunted.
I keep stumbling into the ghosts of the furniture we picked out together.
There's a specter in the living room, housed in the lamp you bought. The orange one, from that junk store off of I80? You remember. All day and all night I can hear it turning itself on and off. Click. Click. Click. The light shines from it, pooling out into the hallway. Except when it doesn't. Not sure which is worse.
It was hard to guess which things you'd take with you. Which things you'd leave behind. Some things both of us wanted and some I’m not sure either of us did. I suppose one of us must have though, because they're here.
It's keeping me up at night.
Something keeps thumping against the inside of my closet door. A soft, almost polite kind of knocking. It wants me to open it, but I know better. We keep doors closed for a reason, after all. I pushed the bed up against it. Now the knocking vibrates through the bed frame at night, making it hard to sleep. At least this way I know it can't get out.
Been dreaming about my childhood home recently.
Did I ever tell you about it?
I think I broke my toe yesterday, on the leg of the couch you bought for the living room. The one I don't even like. I should have said something then. I could have saved us both a bunch of trouble, I guess.
Now that you've hollowed out the space, my mental map of the house is off.
The past is dead. It was housed in the vase we kept on the pedestal in the entryway. Last night I bumped into it and it shattered into a million pieces all over the floor. I'll get around to cleaning it up eventually. Tomorrow, maybe.
For now, I pass the entryway and feel a lurch in my chest. Like a misplaced emotion. It's not even there anymore, not really. I guess it's no surprise that the absence of a thing can still hurt.
I move through the house less surefooted than I used to be. But I am learning.