Fly Away Kitchen

I opened my eyes to look at the sunlight streaming into the window of my apartment. In the rays of light dust particles floated and danced around. I sat up in my futon, and my entire head and shoulders became bathed in this light. I winced, as it was far too bright for my sensitive eyes to handle. 

I pushed the blankets off myself and stood up. But when I took my first step I almost tripped and hit my head on the counter, as my foot had gotten caught in the blanket. I shook it out viciously and attempted to start my morning routine in a state of normalcy, but at this point I had already become too flustered. 

I turned back and folded up my futon. However, I left it right where it was-next to the refrigerator. I let out a deep sigh and leaned back on my counter to survey the place I had been sleeping for the last few months. 

Truthfully, it wasn’t at all odd how I ended up here-sleeping in my kitchen every night. I had a partner whom I loved dearly. But one day they went away to a new world without a trace, and I have been all alone in this apartment ever since. As such, I cannot sleep in the bed. It is too big for me. I feel the other half of myself missing when I sleep in there. There is no noise in that room either. I do not hear the sound of their breathing, or even their snoring, it is completely silent. But when I am in the kitchen, the refrigerator hums all night long. 

Hence why I do not think it is at all peculiar for me to sleep in the kitchen. As anyone who has dealt with loss would know, we deal with it in any way that will make it easier to get through. 

My partner never enjoyed cooking, so the kitchen is not infested with their presence like every other part of this place. When I am in the kitchen, I am in a place where I have always been my own person. Where I am my full self. Everywhere else has lost that quality. When I am at the train station, there is a gaping hole in my chest. When I sit down at the office, I am cut in half vertically, with one half nowhere to be found. When I walk the streets to the store, I do not have feet, my ankles just float above the ground. 

Then I get back here, open the door, and see my stove, my pantry, and my toaster, and I am no longer missing any pieces of my body. This is the last place on Earth where I have any comfort. 

“Comfort” may be too easy of a word to describe it. The feeling I get when I enter this room is similar to a feeling I only experienced when I was a child. That feeling would only occur late in the afternoon when I had found peace. It didn’t happen most days when I was kid, because I was a very rowdy kid. However, on some days of the year I would find myself in complete bliss looking out the balcony at the orange and purple sky while my grandmother silently read a book behind me. I didn’t think of anything, nor feared anything. I was just there existing in that moment of the universe with no future or past. 

Perhaps I only made up that feeling when looking back on the past. When I desperately wanted to find a time in my life when I was happy and content. Yet, despite this I truly believe I had those moments. Now I cannot experience those exact feelings anymore. I have witnessed too much, and each day I live on a razor thin edge. Even one week without work could spell the end of my days in this apartment. 

I put these thoughts away as I began to prepare myself a cup of tea. I try to keep my mornings quiet now, with no philosophy or burdensome thoughts of the past. Instead, I want to live in the peaceful setting of my kitchen where nothing ever happens. No sadness, no joy, just calm. 

I sat down on one of my highchairs to enjoy my tea, when I suddenly heard a buzzing sound. I knew immediately that it was a fly. I darted my head in every direction to find this bug, but it was completely hidden from my view. I didn’t want a fly disrupting the fragile harmony that I had cultivated with my kitchen. 

A few seconds went by without any noise. I felt a sense of relief come over me, and I relaxed my shoulders. Perhaps there was no fly at all. Or, at the very least, maybe the fly was resting and wouldn’t buzz again until I had left the apartment and gone to my office. 

As I was taking a sip of my tea, I heard that buzzing again. I clenched my teeth together so hard that it began to hurt my jaw, and my knuckles became white as I gripped my mug in pure anger. I was not going to live with that fly in my kitchen. 

I kept myself perfectly still, waiting for that fly to buzz again. This time, with my full attention on it, I would be able to hear where it is coming from and find it. I was intending to crush it so hard that no one would ever be able to identify its remains as a fly. 

At last, after a full minute of excruciating pain where my breathing had become shallow and my heartbeat had risen considerably, I heard the buzz again. I had been holding my mug up, and my arm had become tired, but I didn’t let this deter me. I immediately threw my mug on the counter, causing a loud bang and creating a crack on the side of it, but I didn’t care. I heard the buzz near the sink, and I raced over there as quickly as I could. 

I caught sight of it for a second climbing up the wall of the sink. I smashed the palm of my hand against the spot I had seen it as hard as I could. When I lifted up my hand again, I saw nothing, except that my palm was turning red. I had put myself in considerable pain, and the fly had escaped. This made me even more infuriated. I grabbed the bills laying on the counter and rolled them up to use as a weapon against the fly. 

I marched around the kitchen island with my weapon and sneered at the thought of that horrendous creature. At last, I heard it again. I looked up to see it crawling over one of the cabinets. I laughed with joy upon spotting it and began to frantically whack at the fly. It was mocking me. Every time I was about to land the finishing blow on the creature, it flew up and landed less than a foot away as if it was not at all concerned. 

I was panting with exhaustion after a minute of unsuccessfully trying to kill the bug. The fly itself looked to be just fine. In fact, it was now rubbing its front two legs together mischievously. In a fit of rage, I threw my fist at the fly. As always, the fly flew up into the air, and my fist smashed through the cabinet, creating a gaping hole. 

I pulled my hand back and looked at what I had done to myself. Blood was oozing out of where the wood splinters had scratched me. My fingers were not broken, but they were sore. I fell back onto the ground and wailed out in pain. 

At first, I directed my anger at my cabinets. How could they be so cheap that one punch was enough to break them? Then I became mad at the fly again. If that creature had not infested my home I could have enjoyed my morning, peacefully. 

And then, after a few gasps for air, the fire in me went out. As I clutched my hand my eyes filled with warm tears, and they began spilling over my cheeks, and down my face. I leaned over, trying to keep myself together, but the tears kept falling. They landed on the floor and created a puddle. 

This was the first time I had cried since they left. 

I opened my eyes, and despite my vision being blurred by tears, I could make out the fly crawling on the ground beneath me. I pulled myself up and stumbled over to the window. I opened it and gazed out at the sea of glinting buildings below, and the brilliant orange sky above them. As I hoped, the fly buzzed past me and flew out into the world where it could be free.