in the morning, the mansion is an open history of deaths in love and deaths of love.
the living room is missing jennie's grand piano, the shelves already halved of books, now absent of alien titles, and yet, the pristine of white and home with so much space no longer drawing the danger of fragile encounters and stares of riddles. yet, this inconsolable contrast with the cared-for garden without blooms, tamed overgrown and the daylight that touches every corner of the mansion, delicate to memories.
this strange glow of lightness as if you've only been here once, still eager to start something new.
"i'm almost done with my things. i should be finished by tomorrow morning." you look up to the top of the stairs. "figured i could use the headstart while you were still in new york. i had nothing to do anyway," she says, coming down to meet you, watch clanking against the wood of the stairway, and her finger still wearing your ring.
"i like what you've done with the place," you joke, and if her smile is a pretense, you wouldn't know.
"well, you go ahead. you have a lot to sort out. i'll be in the garden if you need something," she says, leaving you to yourself; this fortress of bones.
the bite of nostalgia isn't so strong when teeth has been pulled out.
there is nothing for you anymore in the master's bedroom. you've been living in one of the guest rooms, devoid of anything you but your clothes, your shoes, your journals, your bereavement for nothing wrong—for everything kind that jennie did and would have attempted.
you used to be so happy in the same room as jennie that you almost never left, all day in bed, writing songs and unveiling every mystery left to wonder about one another. was it dissatisfaction? of what? you've had everything but it's not like falling out of love is a rude awakening. a day turned into dreading the week, feeling it might be true, until the realization became the reality that you couldn't accept for a month. dissatisfaction of what? this isn't the seven-year itch overdue, you think.
five months later, it's trying to let it smooth itself out until it's a year of civility. the trying has only made you feel disgusted and smothered; declarations of love came with doubt and guilt, thrown out like afterthoughts until they're plastic and glossed resentments; the tiring, unfulfilling activity of looking for love in minute touches, being cooked for, stories told to nobody else but spouses. dread has made you foreign to the language of tenderness.
and then separation was the usual, avoidance as the standard of normalcy and affections are trials with pure chances of errors.
marriage and bedbugs, you sigh.
there is so much to settle. cleaning up the mess is more tedious than setting everything in place, but at least you're still two together in this. thinking about packing already makes you tired that it makes you sit on your unmade bed.
you make peace with the absurd vastness of silence. it's too much without the noise of emotions and the static of unanswered questions. is this how it feels when the revelation is over? you used to write so much with them, and now, here, at the edge of the bed and edge of loneliness where lines for old loves used to be accessible and easy.
here i am, sitting among the fondness of solitude, it explains. in midst of place sunken, and with all the things you loved about me.
"lunch?" you hear jennie ask as you pass the dining area—gamjatang. your feet follows the smell with childlike wonder, eager to eat what you've actually been missing. "i made too much, i think."
"i'll set the table," you find yourself saying, your hands already reaching bowls for two.
here and there. it's been a while since there had been two on the table at the same time. here is your seat, and jennie, there, barely a feet away, watching you serve yourself with the same nervous smile in anticipation for your comment on the cooking.
jennie's cooking was a way to talk with one another in days and nights that you cannot bear to be in each other's presence. in the dictionary, there are three hypothesized definitions: (1) an empty plate and bowl on your side of the table meant i wanted to talk to you; (2) your food in the fridge meant i'm not expecting anything today; (3) a text as a reminder for meals meant i'll always care.
you don't know what this means now. maybe i might as well, or can we try being friends?
perhaps, it's a question: shall we perish in this?
the way to a man's heart is through his stomach, after all, and jennie's cooking is never something that one suffers through.
a taste. it's still one of the best things you've ever had.
"well?"
it's one of the reasons why you loved jennie.
"your gamjatang is still the best gamjatang," you say, ever so earnestly.
her smile is still one of the best things in this home.
you eat, talking about the insane amount of boxes, the lovely blooms that used to be before winter outside, how the mansion still feels alive as you offer each other niceties without danger and strategy to keep the conversation going.
she pours you wine on your old mug.
jennie was the best thing you've ever had.
