13 thoughts

The house smells like burning, the first job of a housewife is not to burn the house down. I walk in and nothing is burning in my house. Today, mild success.




I still think of him in terms of termination, I think, take, I want him to leave himself permanently except for when I need to iron his shirts or wash his dishes, I want him to leave all his desperation in my body with a gesture of quietly explosive resignation so I can do something useful with it like make a baby, I want the table to always be in front of the window, I don't need to talk.




I feel this way because he no longer exists, perhaps never did, except in memory. Doesn't every woman want to give birth autonomously, to an invisible father, all-powerful but contained within the limits of untouchable reaches of the mind.




I think of him whether the window is open or closed, but I think of him with more intensity if there is a breeze floating across my skin.

Our washing machine is Italian, it is compact and always gets stuck mid-cycle. It has a metal basin with a plastic lock, all the wet clothes settle to one side and if any water stays, it sends a charge through all the clothes and you reach in and it electrifies your whole arm until you discharge by tremulously touching something metal which reaches to the ground.




The quietest moments must be dredged up from the loudest.




The window blocks all the light when the shutter is drawn. It could stay drawn for ever, I could lie in this bed forever, I am still lying in this bed if I shut my eyes in another bed with another person and that's it, there were no details in his apartment, apart from the architecture, so it is very easy to remember: Enter, ante room with floor-length window, floor-length mirror across, one chair one table one metal square ashtray, fleur-de-lis stone tile, two glass doors to the bedroom, which contained, a bed, a shelf, and one white block of wood with indecipherable numbers directing an unknown person to its position in an unknown building, which is not the building it is in now.




We sit on the bed, an indeterminate period away from sleep which is not still grasping the sensations of waking.




If you thought this was building towards a conclusion, you're wrong: I can say that the light comes through the window, that light is light the same way realtors think beige is beige, the light doesn't change but how it reflects does. I remember the same things every day in a different order, I enjoy feeling that reality just touches me lightly on the shoulder. It could ask me to dance if it wanted; but I just told it to sit down and do another line, I just told it that speaking was equivalent to not, possibly the unsaid is richer.




I don't hear voices from the salon in my bedroom, nor do I hear the door open into the apartment when I am seated in the salon. When people sing in French, I don't hear words because I don't know French. I hear singing. I hear the baby crying in my room, the people fucking upstairs in his room and the man snoring in his room and the children shouting across the courtyard in the salon. The overheard from the other apartments mandates a certain course of action in the apartment. In my room I cough and sleep and wake and it is always cool and dark and empty and preverbal; in his room we always have sex whether we continue reading or talking or doing whatever it is we were doing. In the kitchen I always think how I would like to stay and how the calendar on the wall is as dishonest as a tabloid because i am doing dishes and watching a pot of something simmering and this activity is without time, and in the salon I am waiting for someone to come home and make noise again, because the quiet is so pregnant.




I want desire without expectation but this is impossible.