Six Cartons

I didn’t notice the days go. Not really. I drifted, in those days. The time was a blur and I measured it by the ache in my chest but I couldn’t say how long it was before the ache was less and then gone. Not gone, more like the memory of pain than the pain itself.

I measured it by how many cartons of cream went bad in my fridge. Not bad, just off enough that when it meets the hot coffee it’ll separate into filmy clouds on the tawny surface.

Six cartons and you haven’t come back.

I drink my coffee like my dad did, two creams, two sugars, and a cigarette. It tastes different outside when the spring has almost turned summer. It tastes different sitting under the porch, just outside the front door. And, of course, it tastes different to have a front door that leads outside.

I never liked that about your place. The way that the front door opened into a hallway like a hotel and the hallway lead to the elevator and the elevator to the lobby and the lobby out the front doors and even then everything was concrete and water features and you can’t smell the rain over the noise of the traffic.

There wasn’t any traffic that night though, when I stood in the hallway and I heard the lock turn behind me. Except that the sound of the lock sounded so much like the sound of the latch that I thought you were coming out after me. But then, footsteps, away, away.

It tastes different here where the daffodils grow up out of the grass from bulbs that who knows who planted and who knows when. The air itself tastes green. And the coffee, well the coffee tastes like stretching out my arms in the morning in the bed that isn’t empty because I’m in it.

Six cartons and it’s the first spring in two years that I’ve watched the daffodils grow.

There’s an unbelievable amount of junk under this porch. It is the space where all the other tenants in all the other years left the things they didn’t want to pack and someone left the plastic wrapping from a package they ordered from Sears and if that doesn’t show you how long plastic takes to break down I don’t know what will because when Sears was still around so were you. Well, maybe that’s not such a good example.

There’s a set of wooden wind chimes too, hanging outside the door. Only now its more like wind chime because there’s only one left. It clinks softly against the siding. Not clinks, no that’s too metallic a noise for the hollow, woody flavour of that sound. There’s a ballpoint pen on the ground that some boot stepped on sometime and now it’s laid out flat with the pieces of its broken shell around it looking for all the world like pieces of pottery at an archaeology exhibit laid out flat in a way that makes you think they used to be whole.

I love this porch. It doesn’t block the rain, not quite. And so the concrete grows stripes of moisture in wavering lines across and through to the grass. And the water drops dot the cloudy cream on the skin of my coffee like dimples smiling up at me. There’s something about a shelter that lets you feel the rain. Less claustrophobic. Like the concrete of your balcony that was such a perfect overhang that sometimes the wind had to kick up just to wet the windows. But you couldn’t even hear the wind. Insulation. It’s a very quiet building, you said.

It’s a very quiet tomb, I thought.

It’s very quiet under the porch. I can hear the wood creaking, the wind chime plonking? Maybe. There are birds somewhere, chirping about something. And the wind, well the wind sounds like the wind chime except for when it sounds like breathing. It’s very still in this little breeze with the rain stripes stretching out in front of me and a spider has spun a web right across the corner of the door jam. What a vulnerability that must be. You brave thing.

There is the stillness of things that are alive all around me and the curl of smoke from the glowing tip of the cigarette is curling into nothing at all. My coffee is hot but less and less and less until the last of the sixth carton is clinging to the side of the empty mug and you haven’t come back.

Perhaps tomorrow I will drink my coffee like I used to. Black, with a novel on the side. There’s a rickety wooden chair under this porch that didn’t fit the décor of so and so’s new place that one time. It looks like my Gran, sitting by the grass with a green mug of black coffee, watching the daffodils grow.

There is a taste to the air that is achingly familiar and I realize that I have forgotten what you smell like even though I can still feel your damp hair against my cheek, fresh from the shower. Or maybe that is the damp of the rain, misting through the porch slats and painting stripes across my face.

The last drag of my cigarette tastes like the first summer we met, and I feel like I have forgotten something.

A memory nags, at the back of my mind, or at the back of my heart, and is gone. Not gone, more like a smell that brings tears to your eyes and you cannot for the life of you remember why.