I feel them day after day. I hear their secrets, small conversations that dwindle in the dark room. Once, there had been a time before them. But there was a time before them.
The day I met Her we saw each other at the store. I knew we were meant to be together. I went home with Her, and I knew She cared when She carried me up the back stairs despite how heavy, helpless, and awkwardly shaped I was. From that day on we spent every night together. It was more than I thought I would have in my life, dare I say perfect. But I said it a little too soon, because He came one night, and He never left. I have to share Her now.
I’ve tried many times to smother Him in His sleep. He lays there snoring, and I resent Him and His hot breath. However, I am useless. I am helpless. I can’t even smother a stranger. I know She must still love me though. She spent a whole day building a frame just for me. She still washes my sheets and puts blankets on me when it is cold. But then I listen to them talk quietly at night, and it makes me wonder if She ever loved me at all. I wonder, but in my heart I know She never loved me like that.
I still listen to them talk in the dark. But it is different now than when we first lived in that small apartment with the green walls together. Back then they had been exciting in the way newness is exciting. They came with uncertainty, a twinge of awkwardness, and the inevitable fear that you find when you are vulnerable with someone else. At some point that excitement subsided along with the fear and the awkwardness, but I don’t think the vulnerability ever left. They would say the same things every morning and every night. “Good morning how did you sleep? Did you dream?” and before sleep “Goodnight, I love you, dream with me.” The same every morning, and every night. Every morning, and every night. A start and close as though without it the day would never really begin or end. I wanted to believe they had become predictable. If they were predictable it would mean they were somehow boring, or dull. Something all too describable. In their repetition of day after day I first questioned whether their words really held any meaning to them anymore. However, if I really believed they didn’t hold meaning, I know It wouldn’t feel as though the day never really comes to an end when one of them says “Goodnight. I love you. Dream with me?” and there is only silence in response.