The apartment dances in the shadows from a single lit candle still not burnt out from the draft crawling through the open window. Two pairs of shoes lay abandoned, one pair old. Worn and torn from countless walks down the city streets.
The other pair, though more neatly put to the side of the entrance, is since a couple of days back missing its right inner soul, the other shoe does only one shoelace. Kleenex fills the floor of the nearby two-person's bedroom.
A lone woman lays in the dark, her mind far away from the present. She can't do anything other than daydream on such mornings as these. Waiting for her other half to return from the long night shifts always seems to keep them apart.
When she turns her head to the clock on the nightstand she’s met with a blooming picture taken from one of their very first secret adventures in the nearby hills. In the picture, she stands tall, confident, and at ease. Just behind her over her shoulder shines the brightest of smiles. Seemingly illuminating everything in the frozen moment of time.
Through the wall, steps can be heard from the stairwell. Rising to her feet she makes it to the kitchen. The footsteps pass the apartment door, not stopping for a second. ‘next one will be them’ she thinks. Lifting the coffee cup to her mouth as she sinks down on one of the chairs around the circular table.
The candle waivers in the wind. A delicate balance holds the warmth from going out in a puff of smoke and for the light to remain. Steps from outside echo through the window and the woman quickly rises to her feet and makes the way to the window. Outside the sun has just begun to rise but there is no one below. In the apartment, the air seems to change from one moment to the next.
Where there was before only silence there are distinct breaths quickening. The woman shakes the growing unease from her mind and returns to the table. At the corner of her view, the candle flame stills its dance, simply waiting with the rest of the world.
Time ticks by.
Waiting turns from minutes to hours in the little kitchen. No knock on the door, no key in the lock. Calls end in voicemails, end in doubt. She presses a rigid hand to her heaving chest. The lack of sound is no longer reassuring to the contrary it’s almost unearthly. On other floors, children laugh, and the couple to their right are arguing.
She feels like she’s suffocating taring at her now far too-tight sweater. Trying to get it off her. To let her breathe but it’s uncaring for her distress.
A panicked call climbs up the eggshell white walls at the same moment as the candle's delicate flame stifles. The frantic woman's gaze catches the thin smoke flowing in waves up towards the ceiling.
The fragile balance tips. Like glass, it shatters into a million pieces. She stops. Breathing becomes impossible as time stops. The stream of time becomes a calm bond at her feet.
To the left of the smothered candle stands yet another photo. This one of a man in his twenties, with the same smile and thousands of little hopes behind his eyes. His eyes don't line with the camera but she knows where they rest, on who they stand frozen forever on what would become his other half.
Ripples forms in the silent stream of time and further up the stream crashing waves sound out.
At the far right of the candle stand a closed vase of mesmerizing crystal. A plack on its front has but one name engraved into it. Static fills her ears at the dam tries to hold the waves back.
But the cracks are beyond fixing at this point and as she regains her vision from behind the stream. As she once again observes the dates finely stamped under the most beautiful name she ever heard the dam brakes and wave after wave of unfathomable grief washes over her.
And as she takes the last breath of air she can but wonder if the love of her life will be waiting for her if she lets go of the shore now. And so she does,
the underwater current dragging her under.
