This is a novel, of course. We have time. If the story was as simple as you and I, as I and I, as any one thing so simple, there'd be little time at all. But this is a novel. The abrupt brush of arms and the firefly blink of our story might fill a page of twelve point Courier script. It might even fill seven if we had the vision to freeze our instant and stare it down. It might be exciting, but this is a novel. It will start with me. You'll arrive soon thereafter. There will be a fall. These things will be very real for us, but there is much more under the sun. There is a house, for instance.

When I purchased it, the house seemed very different. The stairs, in their creaking, seemed such charming things. Now I hear those charms for what they are. There's doubt in the air, here. A piano was built in on itself, every edge as dangerous as the words you said that night in Tucson. It's a thing rife with self-awareness, this house. I could burn it around us and dream through the centuries without remorse. I could have it demolished. I have the money. It deserves what it demands, what we all demand and deserve--an end.

The first of the furniture, moved from my one bedroom apartment, was insufficient to fill the space. There was too much air. I recall the sensation of standing within a held breath, a dead lung, perhaps. Over time, pieces of merit presented themselves. I doubt I'll ever have the tenacity to move. That's the old joke, though, the punchline of it. It's the old joke you've heard and heard, the one at which you've never laughed.

Timestamp: 03.07.07 at 08:28 PM. Filed under: Fiction.