There were no cars on the road. I looked to the right, down the
row of houses, down the row of front yards just like mine. I hoped to see
someone looking back, out on their lawn, too, wondering where everyone
went, and who let in all the light.
I didn’t go back inside; it felt the same outside as it did inside. It
was as if the gray light of the morning had blown all the windows and
doors open, reaching every corner of every room, turning the inside out,
or the outside in, or blending them together to form some odd middle
ground where nothing was hidden and nowhere felt cozy. It was as if all
the world were connected as a simple labyrinth; it was not meant to trick
you, or get you lost, but there were no single rooms, and everything was
simply another hallway, leading to another hallway, and so on. There was
nowhere to stop which truly felt like a destination; everywhere seemed to
guide you somewhere else.
The yard guided me to my right, off the grass, over the driveway,
into the stone-filled drainage ditch between ours and our neighbor’s yard.
And the ditch guided me up, towards our backyard, towards the hill and
the trees. I knew where I was going from there.
At the top of the hill was Josh’s place. The sliding glass door
under the back porch was open, as always. He was already up; he was
downstairs, wearing his coat, leaning on the wall, staring at his shoes as
they tapped anxiously on the ground. When I walked in, he looked up
at me with a face not surprised to see me altogether, but surprised to see
me in that moment. It was as if he’d been expecting me in a larger sense,
but had become more interested in the flecks of dirt on his shoes at that
instant.
We stood, silent.
“What?” I asked him.
Josh stared at me, a hint of confusion on his face. “It’s my house,”
he answered.
“What?” I asked again.
“I don’t know. You were the one who came up here,” he said.
His expression was unchanging, as was mine. Both of our faces
said that none of this mattered. It was a simple miracle that my words
reached his ears, or that his words reached mine. It was the sort of
morning that ate words and sounds, destroyed meanings and deflected
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