Suddenly everything is sadness. Her notes on the kitchen table are sadness. His jokes are sadness. He hopes she will make it home before he leaves for work in the evening. He hopes she won't.
By the time he gets home she has been asleep for hours, rolls away from him. They are two autumn leaves sharing a one bedroom apartment.
She is accustomed to sadness, her family gave it to her at birth. He is unfamiliar with it, has no idea how he should respond. He gradually becomes aware of the source of this particular sadness, it is seeping back from the future, from a point in time when she is no longer being. As her body rolls back to his he knows he cannot tell her this, lies to himself that he is protecting her, that by saying the words out loud he may cause them to become true.
One autumn leaf is picked up by a light breeze, becomes dust. The other is placed between two sheets of plastic, slipped inside a heavy book, preserved, unchanging for years.
He smiles, the only heavy book he ever talked her into reading was titled The Unbearable Lightness Of Being, they'd agreed the name of the lead character should be the name of their first son.
Ten years later he catches himself wondering if the author of that book might approve of his definition of sadness, two autumn leaves sharing a one bedroom apartment. He imagines her poking his ribs, laughing at his vanity. Just the same he has to get out of bed, find pen and paper, write it down before he can go back to sleep.
Parkstreet
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