Living Together

The weight of a slack-legged table fell across his thighs. Every morning, he would pull out his chair, sit down, lift the table a little higher with his finger tips and shimmy himself into place. When he let go, the old wooden frame compressed back into its lazy shape. If he were to set down a handful of marbles, they would all slowly roll to that gutter where the two halves meet, the crack where the leaf goes. He spread peanut butter on wheat bread.

Upstairs, the floorboards whined as she turned in her sleep. An auditory memory (of her sitting up, liberating the mattress springs, the covers sliding off, her feet dangling and searching for slippers with that terrible brushing sound and the house moaning with each heavy step toward him) struck him with internal cacophony, and he cringed.