What Now?
In the unending rain, under its strumming frenzy, it was impossible to make out a single car out of the streaming yellows and reds and the light blinding the asphalt. If you listened closely, you could imagine the silence inside, or the clamor of a fight, or the gentle tune of the radio. From the kitchen window, all you could hear was the hum of the ensemble. From the living room, what seemed to have taken over over was the glow vibrating through the ceiling. The switch hadn’t been flipped after her departure, the last morning she went to work.
On the coffee table, there lay the remains of a half-eaten piece of buttered toast, her socks bundled next to the plate along with the last report she’d taken hope from the office. It was a large green file with fifteen documents crammed inside, all detailing proposed decrees that would make her teeth grit and her mood sour. Sometimes, the paper spread throughout the apartment, it infiltrated the pipes and went through the walls, the printed letters got into the food and you could find a cluster in your porridge or your soup, sometimes even a whole word, like on the half-eaten buttered toast on the coffee table, where you could read the word NEONATAL.
A moldy stain traveled along the hallway where shoes were strewn along the white tile. Here too the light was humming. She’d closed the door behind her and locked it with a diligent click. You could hear the neighbors do the same thing at different times. Click, click, click. And another click, for good measure. She didn’t know any of them and never saw them, even when they’d take the elevator at the same time.
Click, click. The light continued to hum, and the cars still went in a loop. It never stopped raining, and the blinking yellows and reds were still circling the block, the road never stopped either. There’d always be moving cards and half-eaten buttered toast, silent neighbors, letters in your porridge. But what now? What now?