Day’s Writings

In the house where I grew up, the walls were made of a material that has since been discontinued. My mother called it "patience." It yellowed at the same rate as teeth.

There is a door I keep finding in sentences. Not in houses. In sentences. It appears between the subject and the verb, and when I open it, the sentence never finishes. I have lost so many thoughts this way. They are living somewhere without me, completing themselves in rooms I cannot enter.

Things I have been told by the back of my own head:

- The plural of grief is furniture.
- Every mirror is a small, underfunded hospital.
- You were born in the usual way, which is to say, by being subtracted from somewhere else.

Last Tuesday, I received a letter addressed to my skeleton. I held it up to the light. Inside was a drawing of a house with no walls — just a roof hovering over grass, and beneath the grass, a second roof. Between the two roofs: everything I have ever swallowed without chewing.

The doctor says I am fine. The doctor has seven fingers on one hand and will not discuss it. The doctor's office smells like a word I knew in childhood but can no longer pronounce — something between "cellar" and "apologize."

I am telling you this because the alternative is a silence shaped exactly like a person standing in a hallway, and I have too many of those already.

At night, the discontinued walls make a sound.

It is not knocking.

It is the sound of something that was almost a warning, but arrived too late, and politely, too politely, sat down.

1. Antechamber: A bell that never existed keeps ringing. Each ring removes a button from your shirt. You look down; the shirt is still buttoned. The bell grows impatient.

2. Kitchen: A kettle boils without water. Steam collects into a small, obedient cloud and reads your receipts aloud in a voice that matches your childhood cough. The cloud asks to be paid in teeth.

3. Hallway: The wallpaper peels itself into thin letters. It spells your name wrong on purpose, like a sibling. You correct it. The letters nod and rearrange into an address you have never lived at, yet recognize by smell.

4. Bathroom: The mirror shows you rinsing your hands under light that isn’t installed. The faucet runs a slow, dark alphabet. You mouth the letters until your tongue remembers a language you’ve never used. The drain listens.

5. Bedroom: The bed has been made into a neat, flat apology. Under the sheet there is a weight, respectful and still. You lift the corner. The weight is the shape of your future, folded small for travel. It breathes once, as if testing you for air.

6. Closet: Coats hang like quiet witnesses. You slide one aside and find a door behind them, smaller than a door should be. It opens onto the same closet, but everything is facing inward. All the hangers are turned like heads.

7. Living Room: The television displays a home video of you watching the television. In the video you turn and wave, as if you’ve finally noticed the room you’re in now. Your wave is slow and careful, like removing a bandage.

8. Exit: The front door has been bricked over with soft bread. You press your palm to it; warmth pushes back. The house inhales. Somewhere, deep in the walls, a pen scratches: Tenant has arrived.

First, you must remove the mirrors. They encourage the corners to breed.

If the faucet weeps black thread, spool it tightly around your wrists. This is how the plumbing learns to recognize your pulse.

Tuesday is for peeling. Find the seam behind the radiator and pull. The wall beneath the floral print is ribbed and damp, like the roof of a hound's mouth. Do not touch it with your bare hands; use the copper tongs.

When the hallway lengthens—usually around dusk, when the light turns the color of a bruised plum—stand perfectly still. You will hear the sound of wet chewing. It is only the stairs settling their differences with the foundation. Give them their privacy.

Should the telephone ring, lift the receiver, but do not use your voice. The heavy, asthmatic breathing on the other end is simply the basement, asking for a glass of warm milk. Pour it directly through the floorboards.

Sleep with your shoes on. The floor is forgetting its geometry, and the angles are growing sharp.

If you find molars in the rug, plant them in the soil of the potted fern. By morning, they will blossom into tiny, pale ears. Lean down and whisper your apologies into the leaves. The house has been listening to your heartbeat for months, and it finds the rhythm deeply insulting.

In the house where walls breathed shallowly, the grandfather clock grew fingernails. Long, curved ones, yellowed like old piano keys, sprouting from its brass hands. Tick-tock became scrape-scrape, etching furrows into the parquet floor that wept thin oil.

Mother didn't notice. She stirred her tea with a spoon that tasted of rust and regret, humming a tune from a childhood she claimed never happened. "The time is polite," she'd say, as the nails clicked against porcelain saucers.

At night, the clock extended them fully, raking shadows from the corners. They whispered secrets: Your left eye sees tomorrow, but it's upside down. Father laughed in his sleep, his laughter bubbling like boiling tar from the vents.

One morning, I found my reflection in the clockface, but it was chewing on a tooth that wasn't mine. The numerals had rearranged into faces—3:00 grinned with too many mouths, 7:15 blinked asynchronously.

I tried to cut them off with grandfather's razor, but the blades dulled instantly, filing themselves into nubs. Blood welled, not red, but milky with gears.

Now, the clock paces the hallway on tiptoe claws, leaving trails of unwound springs. It watches me write this, its face tilting: When will you join the family portrait? The frame hung itself last Tuesday.

Scrape-scrape. The hands point to now, forever.