That Song We Used To Sing

I know the pouring rain outside can’t be helped. Just as nothing could have stopped him from leaving. Just as no one can help me. The drip drip drip of the rain falling off the ceiling into a bucket is the source of my annoyance. No, the source of my annoyance is much deeper, much darker.

I know there is a soft blanket around me, but I no longer feel its warmth. The warmth has left this house for good, just as I must. The thought of leaving the leaky ceiling and the rotting floors and the creaky doors is too sad, too depressing.

I know the boxes piled about the room are filled with my things, but what do they matter if they are not witnessed within this house. What is the point of gazing at trinkets or reading books that were meant to be on the shelves of this room?

Why am I sitting here? What naive decisions led to the pain I am now in, to the rat-infested house I now live in, to the heart filled with black sorrow I now carry?

On impulse, I rise from the couch, letting the blanket slide from my hunched shoulders. I stumble towards a box lazily labeled Pap + Pens. The contents of which consist of all the writing utensils that brought me joy earlier in life. Back when the ceiling still leaked and the doors still creaked, but the house was full of laughter and a light so much brighter than the sun. I open the box and pull out a slightly crumpled piece of stationary. Fancy stuff he bought for me when he still smiled at me, when he still shined. With pen and paper in hand, I shuffle over to the counter and sit on the purple bar stool he bought me from our favorite diner, back when he still thought of me, back when he still cared.

I lower the pen to the paper and hesitate for a moment, my hand shaking. With gentle strokes, I begin the letter.

Dear Future Reader,

I am the owner of this house, but not for much longer. I imagine that you are young and full of dreams of starting a life of your own. I was, when I moved here. I imagine that you are much like my past self. I wish there were a way to tell my past self that life is not full of love and happiness, but rather it’s a disappointment.

I am going to give you a lesson most don’t learn about life. And you most definitely won’t learn this in school.

One day your life will be filled with color, laughter, and light and it will feel as though the feeling will never end. I am sorry dear reader to tell you that it will. All good things must come to an end. And more often than not they end much too early.

If you move to this house, know that it held so much more than the mold and rats that it harbors now. I urge you, dear reader, to fill it with happiness once more. But be careful, for the world is full of bad people who think themselves good. Believe me, I know.

Take my advice. Don’t fall in love. Don’t open yourself to that kind of pain and devastation.

One day, there will be someone who breaks your heart. They will walk out of your life and there is nothing you can do. That pain will consume you, until you can’t feel anything anymore.

So please, dear reader, I beg you take thins house, make it your own. And know that you can prevent this before you become like me. Dead in every way but physically.

I drop the pen to the table with a soft clack as the pen hits the wood, and carefully fold the paper in thirds. I go to the box and fish out a tack. Blue, of course. He used to buy ten packets of thumbtacks and open them all to make a combined one, with only blue tacks. Just for me, back when my favorite color meant something, back when he was willing to do anything to please me.

I slide my slippered feet across the wood floor, that we had enthusiastically washed white to bring light into the house. Now the pain chips and the white is stained from years of use. Down a hallway, so familiar and yet so foreign, is his door. Simple, unrecognizable to anyone but me. The hinges creak as I push it open. The room is empty. Devoid of his things and his presence and his smile and him. The single window on the far wall is draped in curtains borrowed, but never returned from my mother’s house. Just like him, borrowed, but never returned.

I walk to the wall on which his grad picture used to hang. His grad picture that was taken only hours before he had carried me over the threshold to our new home.

I take the tack and pin the letter to the wall for any to see. I back away from the room, not wanting to turn my back on it, for fear that he might appear, sitting in his mother’s old rocking chair, holding his arms open with a smile. But of course, he doesn’t.

I walk back down the hallway and retrace my steps to the couch, draping the soft blanket over my shoulders. I curl up into a ball, hugging my knees as if they are my mother or my father or anyone who could help me.

I listen to the rain dripping into the bucket. The wind whipping at the trees.

I know the pouring rain outside can’t be helped. Just as I can’t. But the pitter-patter of the rain on the roof and the drip drip drip of the water in the bucket and my shallow breathing sounds an awful lot like that song we used to sing.