A Letter from Evangeline

Dear You,

Things are not the same.

I sit in the room that we always used to sit in. It looks the same- the old plaid couch with the tattered armrests. Your bright green galoshes beside the door. The faded yellow curtains hanging lifelessly from the rod that took you three hours to nail into the wall. 

Three hours.

It looks the same. But it’s not. I stand by the window and run my fingers along the edge of the right curtain, just like you used to. You called it your nervous habit. I called it your happy habit.

When you were here, rain was falling from the trees. I look outside now and leaves fall instead. I feel like those dead leaves, you know? After I fell I just laid there, no where else to go. Waited for someone to make me crumble with just a touch. What happens now? Do I disintegrate? Do I go back to the earth? 

And fall again.

Maybe by the time I fall we’ll have come full circle. I’ll be in the kitchen and the rain on the windows will disguise the sound of the door quietly closing. But I’ll know that you’re there, like I always do, and poke my head out from the kitchen to see you shaking your umbrella and slipping off the galoshes.

The curtains are a little more worn out than when you left.

Why did you like plaid that much, anyway? Was it really necessary that the curtains were plaid as well as the couch? 

But I mind less now that you’re not here. And the stripes criss-crossing each other. Repetitive. The edge of the curtain is soft now, and a little bit dirty from your hands, and then my own.

No, things are not the same. And I don’t like it.

Sincerely, Me

P.S.   I’m waiting for the rain.