Leavings (hyper-draft)

So he fucking left this morning. It's OK. Really. I'm not too upset.
It's not like we're breaking up. It's not like he's being sent half a world away
to some underdeveloped oil-rich country to fight for a cause he doesn't believe in.
No, he's only going to the mountains, to this state's unbridled, lush forests,
to a land still so barely tainted by pavements and roads and homes and infrastructure,
so he can learn how to "range." Yeah, right, whatever the hell that means...

Anyway, he left me here at school with a broad bubble of silence
that burst as soon as he shut the door and snuck off down the hall -
and it unfurled a foul fume that filled this room the fuck up,
and it's choking me now, eighteen hours later - it's just as lethal, just as lingering,
and the crazy-ass assortment of songs my computer's been shuffling through
are helping to abate it, but not much. The off-handed comments I'm saying to no one,
yeah, they clear the smog for seconds at a time, sure. Never for too long, though.

Shit. You know what? You never notice the little things when the person you love
is around to distract you from them. You never notice how much shit is stuck,
deeply tucked beneath your fingernails, which you wish would stop growing.
You never realize that your bed has stayed unmade for at least a month
and that those sheets have been on there for way longer than Oprah recommends.
You never really think about the need to sweep or to scrub the sink or clear the floor;
you never give a second thought to any part of the room you wake up in every day
because none of that stuff is even remotely detectable when you're not alone.

So all of this - the drab dirtiness of this sad little dormitory, the smothering silence -
it's not making this any easier, but it's not awful. Solitude can suffocate you,
but it can also help you see clearly; it can help you define certain things,
like what needs to be done tomorrow, or what can or won't be done today;
it can make you appreciate that mystifying, blind-siding togetherness for what it is,
or what I make of it: a damn good distraction from the horrors of housekeeping.