Reminders

The house is full of reminders.

Not love notes, or perfumed scents, just cruel references to the fact that he is gone.

There are the hall blinds, never hung. She does not know where to begin with the hanging of blinds. She has a feeling is has something to do with plugging walls, which involves the use of a drill. She does not know how the drill works. Imagine that, she thinks, all this time and I do not even know how to use my own drill.

There is the picture he put up above the dining room table. It never did look straight, never matched the décor of a room planned with precision and skill. Before, it annoyed her, the way a beautiful but over indulged child might. Now, it fills her with hate. She wants to tear it down and rip apart the canvass.

There is his side of the double bed, a bed he never made but, instead, upon which he cast wet towels and laundry. For all he knew, the pillows were straightened and fluffed, the duvet smoothed, the wet towels hung neatly to dry, the laundry cleaned, pressed and meticulously folded by elves or sprites or unpaid and invisible servants.

She cannot bear that double bed any longer. She has moved into the guest room. A single bed befitting a single life she thinks, with heavy head and dark eyes.

Each day, she finds something else he left undone, like his life, half lived, like herself, half loved.
Each day she mops up a little more of the spillage she never knew was there and wonders, Is this how it’s to be, from now on?