ALL THAT WAS LEFT BEHIND

A Theory to Complete the Song

I re-entered the house as it was in a solemnly silent state. It was darkened to a point where only a faint, soft light from the sunny hues of the misty sun ran into the room. I looked around the house and quietly pulled off my shoes.

            As I padded into the living room, I was surprised to see Claire mutely sitting on the couch, looking up at me from her floppy covered book. Her eyes boarded into mine with a brooding coldness, and without a word.

            I looked uncomfortably at Claire’s apprehensive eyes, and sheepishly took a seat on the fuzzy chair across of her. “Um, Doug just drove me to the school. I was supposed to meet a friend there. The other boy, Matt? He was the other witness to the fire. Did you see the note I left you?”

            She looked away with a sigh, and nodded. Her face suddenly turned old and frail in her fatigue, and her frizzy blondish hair appeared to have more streaks of grey speckled in than usual.

            I twiddled my fingers in my lap, trying to muffle my shame with a distraction.

            “Yes,” she said. “I saw the note. Tell me again though; why did you have to see him today?”

            I perked up to explain. “Well, we still have that project to do… and, uh, there was a wallet at the scene. He found it and all, and just wanted to show me it.”

            Her eyebrows furrowed together, and an expression of disgust merged on her face. “What? Is he going to give it to the police?”

            I nodded and flashed a small, tightly pressed smile. “I advised him to. It’ll get to the police soon, I’d imagine. I wouldn’t worry about it.”

            She nodded. Her eyes then fluttered up like the gentle, timid wings of a silky butterfly, and locked onto me. They were brilliant and sparkling as she asked, “Sea? Are you going to be alright from that? The fire? Were you scared?”

            Another slight smile appeared on my face, and I gave a little nod. “I’ll be fine. I wasn’t scared. Thank you.”

            A silence settled over us, and a soft haze of peacefulness lingered in the room. In this tranquility, Claire stood up, planted a kiss on my head, and headed up to her room to dig out the next book to whatever popular series she was reading. I nodded and continued to sit there, alone with my thoughts.

            I stood up, and began to breeze around into the living room area in the hopes of entertain my mind with some odd thought, or to look at something, or to do anything normal. I found myself on the couch again, where it was lately getting frequent visits from me, and fingered a trinket in my hands that I had picked up along the way from a lonely bookshelf. It contained a few old crime novels, but it seemed to be more so of a keeper of knickknacks, friends of the books.

            Fingering the hard edges of the tiny ceramic house held in my hand seemed to occupy my mind rather effectively for a while. It was a quaint little thing, and so perfect with its evenly cut earthenware bushes, a nice red door and sweet little windows of blue.

            How interesting it would be to dwell in a flawless home, a perfected, utopian world. How strange it would all feel. Perhaps it would all be too formal, and also much too fitted. There would be no intricate design to the world, with the many interlocking layers of calm and chaos. And is it not the imperfections, and blemishes in the world that provoke one to reach higher, and to improve? What are we, if we are not constantly moving, improving and exploring?