it was an indistinguishable year, a few years ago, when i moved into my new home which would in time become my old home. i was crouching on the bedroom floor, surrounded by worn sheets and paint cans, covering my childhood dresser and bed frame with long red strokes. it was a calming, comforting gesture in a typical sight of boxes half-full and emptied; disjointed furniture waiting to be rearranged; new lives. my smaller cat stepped on the freshly-painted dresser and left a paw mark on the upper right corner, a sign i chose to keep as a reminder of love and levity. it did not take long to paint the furniture, and once all the pieces were dry i set to put them back together.
i could never explain what you were doing there with me in my room that day. you were once good and generous with your hands, but your priorities had shifted. it hadn’t always been this way, of course; there was a time when you could not not have been there. eventually, gradually, as with all things slow and dangerous, you opted for long days and even longer nights with your favoured puzzle. your presence came to feel foreign to me.
i put the drawers back in the dresser. somehow they stuck together so that every time i opened or closed them, large pieces of paint peeled off and revealed previous layers. i had no desire for the forest greens of my youth. after another piece peeled off, i threw the drawer to the ground and cried out in anger. you stood at the foot of the bed and looked at me. your patience rarely ever faltered, but at that moment you questioned my sanity. how strange your voice sounded. i had almost forgotten you were there.
i suppose it would’ve been easy to lose it then, and i could’ve blamed anything, but it had to be you: you and your foolishly standing there, you and your not understanding of what it really meant for me to scream. i sat defeated across the drawer. as i finally exhaled, our last breath lingered in the room, and i quietly misplaced us—the turbulence of your old you and my new me—in the far corners of a red drawer.