The porch light stays on — monitoring during the day, luminating through the night. It glares at the on goers, chasing after them feverishly to catch a glimpse of their face, trying to discern a familiar one, the one of a man who used to come inside the house and stop the light's torrid worries. The light stops chasing, though, to where its faint glow can reach, deciding not to go beyond and risk leaving the safety of the house.
The living room is with no sign of life. It smells of dust and damp and cold, for the porch door has not been open in some while. The curtains have not been drawn in some while as well, by the man who woke up early for work and loved the morning light and loved sharing it with his newly wed wife as a small boy would gift a girl a roughly picked dandelion. Everything stays the way it was left.
And what left, never came back.
Each head of the hooks on the key rack hangs low. Only one key ring hung on the key rack, it held a house and car key, but the hooks mourned, nevertheless, for their missing match made in heaven.
In the upstairs bedroom, lay the wife, in a stiff, yet comfortable position. The position of someone who has passed, eternally resting in their coffin. She wishes she could take a pass on her eternal restlessness. Her mind is clouded with the thought of where the missing keys are and where her missing husband is. She decides, sometimes, that she'll leave this bed and go out to find them.
But do not trust her to find anything, for she loses things like the key to the house and boys.
-Hanna Guzman (2020)
