Unvarnished Words 2012-13

his unmade bed. The rumpled covers made a bubble of laughter creep up his throat. So funny that they should be messy; he could not recall the last time he had actually slept beneath them. Ever since that last day, he had taken to prowling about the apartment at night like a nocturnal beast, dissatisfied with the sunlight. Now he perched uncomfortably on the edge of his bed, unable to lie down and sleep though he was desperately tired.

Across the room a full length mirror leaned against the wall next to his closet, a woolen blanket hung haphazardly over its reflective face. He had placed it there on that first night, after he mistook his own reflection for a glimpse of her. The experience left him badly shaken, not with fear or grief, but something deeper that he could not explain; such emptiness he felt when his own dull eyes stared back at him. Thus the dingy blanket remained; though ugly and tattered, it was far better to see than his own listless eyes.

Thomas let his mind wander back over the day as he sat. His thoughts wandered from the room and he was back at the graveside service, listening to the preacher’s voice pray over her coffin and watching drops of rain streak its glossy black surface with darker ebony trails.

Dust to dust.

He knew she would one day return to dust, they had discussed it many times before, but he had not expected it to be so soon. In all their long conversations and weary conclusions, he had never fully understood what it meant to be dust, to be destined only for dust.

Life with her allowed him to escape from truth for a while, but after she left him it curled up next to him where she used to lie, and pleaded for his attention. Again he heard the preacher’s words.

Dust to dust. We commit thy spirit— Where? He could not remember where they committed her spirit to, only that it seemed like nonsense at the time. Strange that he should now wish more than anything to know where the preacher had conducted her spirit.

Thomas clasped his head in his hands, scuffed the shaggy hair roughly from his face, and demanded the tears to come. But nothing came. The bitterness of their last days together built a dam that steadily forestalled the grief he wished to feel. All he could do was 26