Same Old, Same Old

Next time, I told the empty room, I would plan.

I said it twice. The second time was slower. I wanted the room to take dictation. The room took nothing. I walked the hallway and did not enter the bedroom. I stood at the sill again and smoked the last cigarette of a Monday that had lasted longer than a farm road.

The room did not answer. Rooms never do. They only hold the echo until Monday comes back and asks how the weekend was, and you say same old, and you almost believe it because the alternative is to say a name you should never say at a desk.

I went back to the window. The sash. The sill. Missing shingles across the street, tar paper doing nothing. No unmarked cars. No neighbor with a casserole. James’s invitation sat in the air like a chair I could sit in if I wanted to pretend I was the kind of man who grilled and owned a leaky faucet and packed extra turkey for a coworker who looked like he had swallowed a bee.

I did not want the chair. I wanted a method.

I locked the door even though I was inside, a gesture that made me feel like a person with a border. I turned off the kitchen light. I left the drawer closed. I sat on the couch in the dark and let Monday drain out of my clothes, and when it was gone I was still the man who had a farm road in his weekend and a lie on his tongue and a hunger that had not been spent so much as postponed.

Next time would not be a driveway. Next time would not be a mall with a logo for a mask. Next time I would measure. That is what I told the dark, and the dark, like James, like the room, like the phones, did not argue.

It only waited.