Nightswimming
It’s really quiet now.
I first noticed this quiet the other day, but it’s much more pronounced now.
The other day I put on your sweater and shirt. The ones you had been wearing to go to the shop, and had left discarded on the bed here, in your study. I stood there for a while, in my underwear and your still warm clothes, and looked at your bookshelf. Your house is full of beautiful books. Books I want to read, books I have read, empty books with soft cream pages, and books that aren’t even yours. Then I noticed it, the quiet. It wasn’t just an absence of sound, it was a feeling that permeated everything, as ingrained as the air I breathed. The sort of silence that accompanies absence (A sound I am all too familiar with.) I walked around softly on the balls of my feet on the way back to your bedroom. I took notice of all the little signs of you as I passed and even though I knew it was only a matter of time before this very same quiet took a hold I crawled back into your bed and fell asleep.
Now, here it is again. My attempt to combat this heavy silence? Music of course. I’ve opened up your itunes and scrolled through, and found Nightswimming by R.E.M. The only song by Stipes and Co in your whole music library, and it just happens to be my favorite. It’s not just the melody that I love, which swells and ebbs just as a gentle tide should, it’s the way the words and the voice evoke that feeling of nostalgia so perfectly. Nice choice, if I could only have one R.E.M song, Nightswimming would be it.
Still, this isn’t the sort of silence you get rid of with a pop ballad. Although it does provide a nice soundtrack I suppose…
You should see your place now, the parlor is filled with all sorts of junk. Boxes of linen, screwdriver sets, a sandwich press, an old analog television, a clock. But let’s face it, your house is in need of a clock. It seems so full, you can barely move through the rooms. But it is so very empty. Your absence is overstated, everywhere I look it confronts me. No escaping it. And that’s what makes this quiet different from the other day. The other day, as I snuggled back down beneath the covers, inhaling the smell of you on the sheets I knew you’d be back. Now I don’t know if we’ll ever both be laying in that room on those sheets again. It’s a much more pronounced quiet.
I feel a bit like a voyeur really. I’m noticing all these little things I didn’t see before, for instance; You’ve got writing on your desk, but it’s faded and I can’t make out all the words. You’ve got a really good nail file. You keep a lot of old receipts.
I know for a fact, that eventually you forget the sound of people’s voices, the smell of their skin. I want to try and remember for as long as I can.
