by: m. gantee

It’s been one thousand two hundred and ninety-four days.  It’s been that long.  A long, long time if you’re counting the days.  But maybe not that long if you’re at the end-of-life.  I am neither.  I am neither counting the days nor at the end-of-life.  I am a man with egg in his mouth and coffee on the table.  And the house smells like –….

It’s all a lie.  You know that, of course.  Because I know the count.  I know it’s been one thousand two hundred and ninety-four days.  And of course any man who says he is, with absolute certainty, not at the end-of-life is dilusional.  The future is unclear.  Ask again later.

The house smells of –….

Despite the lies and the half-truths, the house is always here.  Here.  And the house speaks volumes of the truth.

It is never a bar or restaurant or café.  It is never a summertime park that smells of baseball leather and sun-baked basketball court and kid-sweat and taquitos.  It is the house.  Empty and quiet.  Expectant.  Waiting.  I am here, in its belly.  I move with the quietude of one man moving in a house too large to be filled up by one man.  Occasionally, I move upward into its head, rattle around a bit in its memories, and then downward into the darkness of its soul.  I am inside of it.  And yet, it possesses me like a hand possesses a puppet.  And I suppose that that is the truth that you need to know.  At nightfall, the shadows gather about the windows.  I wonder at the quiet strangeness of the shadows.  And yet, if you look into the windows from outside; if you, as a child on a dare, come to the cracked pane; if you shield your eyes from the orange and purple of the late summer evening, you may see me or you may not and that uncertainty will raise the hackles on your shoulders.  Not mine.