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Floor Story

By abandonedstation

Repeatedly smashing into our car. Remember that honey? It was like three years ago or something. I can’t step on the date exactly. You know how the past can kind of just ball up into a temporal mush called yesterday. Sorry I sound like a tired lounge singer. Can you hear me through the walls? Are you still sitting on the toilet panties ‘round your ankles staring at the frightful news on your lap? Look we’ll get over it. Everything will be fine. I promise. I promise. I really do. It’s not an empty threat anymore I offer guarantees now. I can restructure the universe. Did you know that? That’s what people mean when they say I promise. It means I am in control of the situation. More than in control actually. You are bending the situation to your will. So when I say I promise it means I’m something like a god wouldn’t you agree? We’ll have to wait to see if I’m just talking out of my ass on this one. I’m rambling again and I don’t even know if you can hear me. I think we have mice in the basement. I keep seeing things skitter around the corners and the shadows but it might be my mind playing tricks on me. I don’t know if it means I want to see mice or or or something else that is escaping me and I can’t find the word right now. Tip of your tongue. Tip of the tongue. Just barely emerging on time. To be heard when it has to be heard. Striking the match. There’s a saying about broken clocks that I also forget right now. I have had quite a lot to drink. See? I’m opening up. I’m being honest with each other. I’m trying to look to you to do the same through the wall. Through the locked door. I’m cheering you on with quiet hope. I’m yawning in front of the love of my life’s precarious situation. I’m caught between sleep and stumbling across the floor. And a minute seems bit like a lifetime but it’s hard to say because I haven’t lived a lifetime yet but I wonder if I am getting close. Eh honey? Is it finished in there? I still hear you breathing and the odd footstep and neck crack. Stretching. Getting ready to get up and face the night. Stand up stride to the door unlock it open and there I will be. Sprawled out prostrating myself on the hallway floor. I like the paint on these walls. A good colour. We painted when we moved in. We hated the lime green the last people had everywhere but I forget who chose this one. You or me? I’ll say you to make you feel better but I think it was you anyway. There’s a fly crawling up the wall inspecting rubbing its hand in anticipation. Maybe he’s waiting for you. Or maybe he doesn’t care what’s wrong. I won’t tell him anything. He’ll just buzz away and go fuck mrs. fly and get on with his life and we can do the same so just don’t let it get you down these bumps in the road smooth out eventually after all. Maybe. Hopefully. Can never know how things turn out but I want it to get better and that’s a good a start as any. I want change. I want love. I want to. I want to and I don’t know how to finish that sentence. I don’t know what to do. Can’t think of what to grovel and rant. I want to see you. You can be my muse. I can talk about you like a sports commentator. Your hair your facial tics how you glide around the room. Grabbing on to the shower curtain like it’s a lifeline are you there yet? Has your dance brought you across the tiles from sink to rug to can to tub? Swinging around to the knob in five minutes and then the door quietly opens and we bow and forget this whole thing ever happened? I want to. I want to sleep in bed with my hand starting on your shoulder and sliding down your side to your ass. Breathing in unison. Breakfast in bed. All that sentimental shit that isn’t quite a waste of our time. All the stuff we laughed at other couples doing like sharing milkshakes holding hands incessantly weekend picnics matching jewelry and imaging they’re really dead inside. Dead. Rotted empty souls. Horrible thoughts placed upon good people. I don’t understand people anymore can’t bother to assume a thing about them they’re a complete mystery to me because the people I thought I knew I really didn’t and not just you I’m not making you example A in my train wreck of the last five years but everybody even my other woman my other friends all calculations and wires got crossed and I came out with nothing. I’m back at square one and I’m cold and hungry. Crossed wires. Town is burning. Fire department can’t get through. Doors locked. Supply lines broken. Lines become dots until they’re rebuilt again. Lines. Stare at your hands I’m staring at mine it’s a couples thing quick therapy session. Lines. I should have taken a picture of my hand when I was five just to compare. Lines. Tiny little cuts of age crisscrossing the palm. Palm readers. You told me you went to a psychic or something with your girlfriends for a drunken lark. I chortled and changed the subject then but I’m listening now. Was it a story you had ready when you brought it up was it just a a a thing to cut down on the silence on one of those awkward early dates over expensive chicken and cheap wine? Honey I’m being interested in you now. You’ve forced my hand to make it so but here I am. Here. The door. At the door. This door. One of many in the house. When is a door not a door? You are behind this one right? I’m not pouring my heart and mind to a toilet seat? No secret doors that I don’t know about? Secret passage ways you had built when I was on my ahem business trips? What secrets have I missed? I haven’t gone through your drawers in years. I don’t know what I’m missing. Knickknacks upon trinkets I suppose. Ticket stubs chinese food menus ATM receipts tourist guides proof we’ve been from here to there. Proof we left the house and lived as much as the Joneses. We did it we must be good people. Honest righteous upstanding citizens and all that jazz until the shell cracks like a rock on a windshield. We ate all the shallow pleasures and now we can’t climb out of the empty bowl. It’s it’s bothering me I’m trying to honour my new years resolution to cut down on the metaphors the bad metaphors to stop dancing around the point to tell you point blank with no second face but my knees keep buckling and I spew bullshit and close the door and hope everything will be different tomorrow. Knee jerk reaction followed by knee jerk apology. Breaking out of cycles is damn near impossible eh honey? We’re trained to fall into them and love them for what they are not jump in and out of them like hoops. School cycle work cycle life cycle. All around and around. One thing then another. Click. I took the phone call earlier yes I did I heard it all and I’m not mad. Swear I’m not. It’s just another thing that happens. I’m letting it all fall away and rust or get chewed up whatever happens to the trash we don’t need weighing us down. Man’s voice. Another man’s voice. Didn’t catch and his name and don’t care. I’ve forgotten him already. He’s a figment of my imagination. You were just fucking a ghost legs wrapped tightly around the waist of an apparition. I’m letting it go. When I see your face in my mind it gets easier to do it. It gets easier to do everything. I’ve come round full circle I think and am back in your arms. And I love your arms. I do. I do. I do. You think I grimace when I turn away from you or cry and wish for six years ago in the darkness of night but you’re wrong. You forgot how much I cared for you I did too and now it’s slowly coming back every little corner of you I’m remembering bit by bit and I can’t find a speck of hate in any feeling in any these old new thoughts. It’s slipping into old skin that was just waiting for your return. Other people have fell by the wayside close to me close to you they’re all gone now yesterdays papers not even a footnote on our notches on our bedpost. Just us. It’s time for just us. I don’t care about whats-his-name I’ve thrown whats-her-face down the proverbial mineshaft the past has passed. I’m trying to get the wheel turning again my heart a-fluttering again I’m staring at old pictures of us for hours on end not the ones where we’re frozen with our arms round each other because we asked a third wheel to snap it like endless parades of couples but the candid ones instead they’re warming my heart because they’re real they’re full of life and attitude and no vapid smiles. You’re turning away to look at the time I’m grabbing something out of the oven you’re eyes are closed and I’m sipping a cocktail that’s what I’m tearing up over. The real. I can remember those moments better than the frozen snapshots. I’m running out of fancy words Jessie. I just want action now. Reaction sorry. Just something from your end. Do something anything I’m prepared. I’m ready for anything. Dunno if you could do much to shock me now anyway. Suddenly I am a veteran of your methods. Lost my innocence years ago to your hair brained schemes. I got your number I got your way of living down cold I write your routines on the back of my hand I can kick down the door right now if I wanted to but I’m not I’m not I’m just cracking another beer here on my hardwood floor. If I wanted I could get down on my hands and knees and take a peek at your toes but I can just check the photo albums down the hall. The rain stopped hours ago y’know. It’s a clear winter night gotten colder but still crisp put on your boots let us wait for snow to make angels all right? I’ll stuff your mittens under the door and I’ll find a carrot on the fridge. We’ll find a dog and romp with it across some field miles away from here. I can you can something else to do just need a pick me up right? I can fix us another drink like it was nothing like it was water so sit tight and I’ll dig out some ice. It can be wonderful. Wonderful things are within our grasp. Tomorrow is coming and you can’t stop it so don’t worry about this or that sun rise sun set. We’ll go faster than the speed of love I read that somewhere somehow TV maybe. You can’t fool me I’m afraid. Rooting through the medicine cabinet for nothing. I’ve laid out all the pills on the kitchen table. Stacked ten across and nine down. Rows of blue columns of green. Hate me for that throw yourself against the door in rage but you can’t keep me down Jessie. I’m still walking the line I’m making it through the days. You can sink like a stone but I’m not locked in the bathroom so you’ll just have to drown all by your lonesome. It’ll be a first. Death by tic-tacs. Minty breath for the autopsy eh? Does it get even a titter? It wasn’t the finest wit but I would’ve loved to the split second smile on your face. Just a quick pull of the muscles. Just a quick glance at it to make my day so go ahead. Open the door. Open the door. Magic words. Please. Open sesame. I love you. Now. Are you waiting for me to say something? More than something perhaps the right thing? I need to be strung along guided like the fool I am I don’t know what you want to hear what you need to hear that will make the world right again make the sun rise in the east for the first time in eons. I can do things that will make you happy. I am equipped with that function and I want it to happen. Ready and willing. Already on my knees for you have been here for the last hour. I’ve got a laundry list of my apologies and patch up jobs and I’m crossing points off as I blunt their sting. I told her. Months ago. The end. No more. It’s all you now honey. If you think it’s anything more still growing sneaking behind your back still poor excuses cold shoulders then it’s all in your head. It’s nothing now. She cried but I cried more I cried louder I had points to make. I have things to do places to be I said. I have love somewhere else and I have to keep the heart pumping there or else I’ll shrivel up. Cut the cords sail away back here in my home port should never wander away in the first place kicking myself as I rap on our door. Returning to service. Horrible mistaken vacation over. Back where I belong. I can reach the top shelf if it’s too hard for you I won’t ask questions I can be a good little robot a vessel for your whim it’s not hard I can still be useful can you hear me? Blink once for yes two for no. Any communication will suffice for now. Beggars cannot be choosers. You play the hand you’re dealt. More things like that. Buck up cowgirl. Am I dictating your final goodbyes? Is all this just exactly what someone in this house needs to hear and it’s not the person locked in the bathroom? Through me a bone here. Give me something. I’m here for you. My cheek on the door. My hands drawing circles on the hardwood quietly so I can try to hear you breathe. And breathe you are. Ragged but there. And although I’m worried about you always will be I’m not worried that you’ll suddenly stop sucking in the air and spewing it out. I don’t have to look in your eyes to know how far you’ll go. You don’t have it. You don’t have the fucking balls. I’m waiting with 91 punched and then I’ll hang up because I don’t want to waste their time. You’re not that kind of person and you’ll never become that type of person. Old age will catch up with you before your eyes change colour. You won’t clock out early. You want to see the mountains and the ruins you don’t want to die on a tile floor. You want to stick around. That’s your job. That’s your modus operandi. Slitting your wrists in the bathtub like a faded film startlet isn’t. You aren’t enough of a poet to down sixty or seventy yellow pills. That’s not playing the game. That’s turning around in the tank. That’s taking the nails out early. That’s making fun of the ragged handicaps. That’s making your lefts and rights without signaling. You keep pushing me this way and I’m running out of ways to hit you without leaving a bruise. I want to hold you I don’t want you to crawl away I’m trying to remember how it used to be and make that old life out of all these matchsticks and playing cards. Give me a break cut me some slack even some patience and mercy would do in a pinch. Ah mercy. I wonder what it feels like. I’ve never been pardoned by a governor or forgiven by a lover so it’s new to me. Like freshly fallen snow. I read about it all the time. I I I got a lists of books I want to read and if you just want to um join my book club that would be grand. Small one person or two person thing on my bed later on. Coffee and snacks on the sheets. What do you say? Listen. I know secret juicy gossip right up your alley make you right as rain friends and neighbours are just like us drinking like fishes fucking like rabbits popping pills every five minutes wringing their hands and sweating brows over who they are and the endless tomorrows just like us like we do we are typical cogs in the mundane regular wheel of life let’s get off our high horses and laaaauugh the night away. Eh? Huh? What do you say? Nothing but the swirl of a toilet flushing. Breaking silence like a jet engine. Waiting for your footsteps. Checking out the sink honey? Getting those soft, smooth hands clean? What’s next for those beautiful fingers? Where are they going to go tomorrow? Round the strong neck of some back door man? Just curious you know how my mind goes on and makes stories and situation out of the brisk but thin night air. What you did because of my dicking around is nothing in my mind. I’m so far beyond it. It’s not even revenge anymore. Crass petty word toss it away. What it was what it is now is so much more beautiful than that, it’s it’s it’s a baptism, a resurrection, a cleansing rituals for the gods. It’s coming out of the ashes with the understanding eye beaming out of your forehead. It’s newness. Newness. You were fucking him for newness. I be mangy old dog. You be enchanting star crossed lover. I forgive no really I forgive truly no fingers crossed I forgive. I can’t see a crime here I can’t see a trespass. You’re cleansing was mine too. We both fell through the looking glass together and are all the better for it. No penance, both our flings cancel each other out. Or something like that I suck so bad at math. I don’t remember the fight we had over it the screaming the crying it’s like a blur to me I still don’t remember what you wanted me to say but if you remind me I’ll say it know and I know it will be sincere there’s not much I won’t concede to you. I’m trying to remember every barbed remark trying to recall every little moment of division between us.  I’m fucking the facts of this life so hard. As if I was caught in the act pants round my ankles and and and why is the fridge suddenly so far away I can’t even see it when I squint now. I try to think picture how much beer is left inside and I can’t come up with a number beyond some. Some. Maybe for tomorrow then. Call it a night. Call it over for now. No more beer and you unlock the door. Fair’s fair. Sounds good. It’s a step in the right direction the only direction left. I am trying to get better I’m trying to be good I’m trying to find a way and smile and it’s not easy it’s taking time you have to trust me to believe in me I don’t know if what I’m doing is always right because right is becoming so hard to find and hold on to it’s all different shades of yes and maybe I’m just guessing with a heart of gold. Sympathy? Can I get a moan of sympathy from the other side? A gurgle? A last gasp? A skull smashing against the side of the tub? Nothing? Shall I move onto the news of the day? It was sunny. Nice. Not too cold. Had a ham sandwich for lunch. Your sister called this morning she says hi how are you hope you’re feeling better we should come over for dinner and see the baby again he’s grown so much since you saw him last that sort of thing. She said to ring her back any time literally any time the baby keeping them awake throughout the night and all. I forgot to take a note sorry about that I knew I would remember and remind you next time I saw your face you and her look so much alike but I still forgot until this moment. She sounded happy. Hopeful. Excited in a guarded respectful sort of way. Has a lovely voice too. I’m folding up your papers you spilled across the kitchen table I’m not reading them just changing them paper airplanes sailing your secret thoughts flying all over the house who do you think is cute check yes or no what are you doing later mash notes for real people careening down the hall. I won’t look at them ever just getting close to your thoughts that you can’t even share with me. Won’t ask won’t tell. Shrink is out for the night. Try crying to me for awhile. Wrap your scarred arms around my neck. No judgments or advice tonight. Not tonight. Nothing tragic is going to happen tonight. It will be sleepy trot to dullsville. Open door, exit hallway right. Curtain. Simple. I was in the bathroom only ten minutes before you walled yourself up in there so I know what you have to play with I was drunk sure but I catalogued it all like a shark like a professional no surprises please I know what you’re juggling in there tearing open the drawers for something I may have missed. Razors are under lock and key I’m afraid. Hairy legs tonight for the good of us all. And tonight it’s a pounding headache for sure but at least you’ll have minty breath. I hate the empty rattle of my beer can. Hollow. Almost forgot my promise to myself moments ago. My mind is all over the place a bit. Putting it back together brick by brick second by second take concentration my tired eyes can’t decide upon. You know what I think? Not about me but about you? I think you’re running out of time. You’re running on pills you’re running on memories you’re running on well I guess you’re really just running and that’s it and you fell into the bathroom and you don’t mind the soft absorbent fluffy rug and you can’t tear yourself away from the mirror which is holding you in place like medusa’s glare. Sometimes things can better you know. Sometimes is always gonna happen. And sometimes and sometimes and sometimes I just shut right down. Right in the middle of the road. Turn off the engine rip out the key. Deep breath. Again. Say something positive. Start again. Clutch. Ignition. Chugging alive with a weary shake. Back in business. Just sitting there in traffic gonna make a left turn on grand had the whole route planned out in the back of my head when it came from behind I didn’t have time to even react in any pathetic half assed way just suddenly there was a truck eating the back of our car as glass shattered steel splintered and we were pushed far away from ourselves.

Remember that, honey?

Honey?