A Lost Argument

The house was in a void of unusual silence. Is this what peace was supposed to be like? A funeral parlour of lost arguments? The clock on the kitchen stove flashes 12:00 in lime green. The power must have gone out last night after I left – when I told him that this would be the last time I'd ever see him.

The living room smells of fresh faux leather from the newly bought couch that was to be a celebration piece of the life we were building on hard-earned money. All for what now?

Perhaps he’ll come back again this time.  He never recedes so easily on an argument like this. Oh, yes, he’ll be back.

  

The laundry basket filled with clean clothes rests by the T.V.  His white and blue jockey underwear lay casually on top, waiting to be folded and put away. The dark blue woolen work socks are strewn amongst the white undershirts, lost by themselves, their mates floating on the other side of the hamper tangled in some other mess of linens. Someone has to intervene for them to find each other again. 

It all seemed so sudden. This absence. This final decision. Even though threats of leaving were made time and again. There were far too many reasons we had to stay, including bills with co-signed names and neighbourly expectations for perceptions of manufactured happiness.  

The sun washes the wood panel floors of the dining room, wiping away passionate tensions into a sea of nothingness – as if it all didn’t matter. None of it. The fighting, the kissing, the making up then back to the fighting. It all floated up with the dust particles of another day where the sun rises and sets, where people are born and then die, where life just simply goes on regardless of who you are or what you have and haven’t done.

My hand presses onto the floor, tears floating down my cheeks, reminding me I’m real. Or at least something is real.

The ice cube machine in the freezer clunks out chunks into the metal tray, breaking open the panic of superficial meaninglessness in the house.   

The whirring sound of the garage door reverberates through the drywall. Perhaps he’s home; perhaps he really has returned.  But it’s too muffled  – it’s the neighbours taking the kids to school. 

Life has faltered.  Dreams built randomly from reactionary desires are falling away with nothing there to catch them. 

The empty bottle of white wine sits  upright boldly on the counter. He rarely drinks wine. He must have finished it off before he left, the tragedy of wasted time and energy swirling in his mind.  Just like how his mother left in a state of ruin when he was 4, leaving him sitting there, stunned of how we was to become someone from that point on.   

Birds chip in the feeder outside, celebrating a new day of safety and nourishment for them. Everyone said we should just break up for the greater good.  Even the birds seem happier without us being together.  

But no note. Not even a goodbye. Not even a thank you or a retaliatory statement. Just the looming silence of indifference that death’s presence lingers between two people who are still breathing the madness of a final and lost argument.