the closet

i took my shoes off and it is summer and i feel the carpet between my toes and somehow it is cooler in here. rounded wooden shelves, no elbow room, small drawers but no hat boxes. at least it is carpeted and you store your bike in the basement instead so it is soft and dry here, and i can sit and look up at the high ceiling and imagine painted pictures but it is beige.

if someone comes and looks around they'll see sunshine and strawberries spilled on the ground like catastrophe in summer, an abandoned kitchen, door hanging open, silence. instead i stayed inside and cleaned up the leavings and continued to wonder and wait. it slowly got dark, chilly, and somehow quieter and i closed the door and went upstairs and woke up in the middle of the night looking for you, searching under the covers, in the bathroom, even on the couch in the living room but it was silent, and untouched.

next day, sunday, and you never came back and i wanted to find you and know what came next but you always make yourself unfindable. like it is better not to exist when summer has passed, it is better to fade away into another life. we might even live in the same house, we might just pass each other on different schedules, you might be in the kitchen making dinner while i am in my office reading a book and we won't know. you won't see the light on under the door and somehow i will miss the scent of onions and garlic filling the house. and in the bedroom, maybe we will sleep on opposite sides of the bed, and maybe in the closet your clothes hang next to mine, but somehow we always change at different times, and never linger long enough there to share the space.