*
He is out there again. Though fog has already come in over the hill, down into our little valley, placing a massive misty sheet over our heads, eyes, ears, bodies, I can make him out. The shape of his body is easy to discern as his, as easy as recognizing a familiar voice or identifying a person by their steps, after all these weeks, even though I have only ever seen him from a distance, never once hearing his voice or step. Any closer and I’m sure he would become indistinguishable. Falling in with the crowd, we could meet eyes, he going in one direction and me the other, and I would give a friendly, not too friendly, nod, a nod that was closer to basic acknowledgment, acknowledging I had made eye contact with him, unintentionally, and that I understood I was looking at a human (him) and so I nodded, a little hello and a little I’m sorry, I’m not staring, all of it having nothing to do with the fact that he is following me.
Always under the streetlamp. Diagonally. Across the intersection, where he has a perfect view into my home, which used to belong to more than myself. Before the kind breaking.
Never more, never less, his distance seems almost fixed, as consistent as his visits, which are continuous. It is perhaps the space always given that has made me avoid calling the police.
Sometimes with fog, and other times with the dramatic lighting overhead, he is cast in silhouette. How strange for fog and light to create a similar result. The man, visible and obscured, is looking in, and I am watching him in turn. Neither of us stir.
*
We first moved into the apartment with buzzing heads. Buzzing with opportunity, at all the possibilities. We started with almost nothing, but soon the rooms filled with new possessions, gifts we had gotten each other for birthdays and anniversaries that were more for the home than for any one person. This is really for both of us, we would say as the other unwrapped their present to reveal a framed print, one we had seen at a gallery and had both loved so much that we couldn’t stop talking about it for days. Excitement kept us going early on, but excitement eventually turned into familiarity, comfort, which in turn became a tiring repetition we tried to hold off. And even when you see the most glorious picture every day you start to doubt that it is glorious at all, that it might not be what you had thought, and how strange it all seems, how perpetually permanent it is in its place that you hardly ever look at it anymore. We became pictures to one another, unsure if we should hang the other in a different room, in a different light, until no amount of rearranging could bring the image back to life.
*
She wears it all the time, my sweater, an old one with a faded print of a bookstore that closed years ago. She asks me if I want it back and I say no, she should keep it.
It belongs more to you now, I say.
She nods and neatly folds the sweater.
I reach out to her, but she is already walking away.
The picture hangs and she looks at it. Until she can’t.
*
The man is outside again. Of course he is.
I used to draw the blinds when I first noticed him out there. I’d catch sight, though really I felt like the one who was caught, and I’d cover the windows. The room would darken, making me feel even more trapped, so I’d turn on a lamp. I’d immediately see my shadow set across the wall for all to see so I’d turn off the lamp and open the blinds. If I was to be caught, I would at least maintain some hope of being released.
*
Since I am keeping the kind breaking preserved, I try not to touch too many things. I still sleep in the bed because I know she didn’t depart through the bed, and I still use the stove, though only the front right burner, because no one in their right mind would leave through the gas line. I sit on the couch, on one side, the side I always sat on. I don’t run water from any faucet. I am afraid she is still in the pipes, slowly working her way farther from me. If I run the water, she could come back and I know that’s not what she wants.
I pour bottled water into the kettle and place it on the front right burner. I open the cabinet to get my mug and find hers. As the water waits to boil, I open other drawers in other rooms. I discover everything is in its place. As if the kind breaking never happened and she will walk through the door at any moment. I could even make her a cup of tea. I’ll just go and add some more bottled water. And on my way to the kettle, slightly bubbling, not yet boiling, I see the picture on the wall. We were so excited about you, I tell the image. An image I still find beautiful, even if I don’t look at it every day, don’t always appreciate it for what it is, at that stirring level that we could be reminded of if only we stopped and took it in as it was, not as exciting as when we first laid eyes on it, but with the splendor of repeated sightings, living amongst each other all these years, with all we had shared. How could anything lose its vibrancy simply with time?
I want to call her to tell her to take her mug, to come get her belongings, our belongings. Did you only take a change of clothes and your (my) sweater? I would ask. Your belongings belong with you.
The kettle hisses and I think:
Evaporating through the kettle is another way she could have departed.
*
Sometimes I want to call out to the man and ask if he is interested in seeing the kind breaking.
*
With an incessant need for unending space, I hid from her, hid inside my head, where she could never follow, but she would come to visit my dormant body, if only to give my head a simple kiss. The gesture speaking, I am here, but take your space, as long as you need, it is no problem at all, I will be here when you return, and I couldn’t accept it for what it was: patience, understanding, love.
It drove me farther and further, to the point where I didn’t only hide in my head, but took to exceedingly long walks, returning late in the night, where I only lay next to her, who was already asleep, or I assumed because I did not respond in kind, with a reassuring and thoughtful motion, a hand across her body, I merely kept away tucked in our bed, which might as well have been other sides of a canyon, a continent, but a bed can be plenty far if your pursuit is distance.
What else was there for her to do but the very thing I requested: go far away.
*
I’m not sure when he arrived, the man. I assume he hasn’t always followed me. If I hadn’t noticed him, she would have sooner or later. All of this leads me to believe it was sometime around her departure. Not before, not during my period of long walks (or even earlier than that) where I felt truly alone as I took in deep breaths to climb up some ridge to sigh some relief in solitude.
I only discovered him after the fact, the fact being his irrevocable presence. Far less than hers, nothing at all like hers.
I know what I had done, what led to the kind breaking. I had built a scene, taken a still, crafted a pressure to weigh down all the objects in our home, where every movement came out of strain, to even lift a mug, a limb, an eyelid, and kept the oppressiveness overlaid to where I forgot it was ever draped, coated, spread about, where nothing could change, except for the weight to build, only onto me, never to her, because it was all made up by me, but she would receive the entirety of my frustration. Why have you created such a thing? I would ask her, instead of myself.
I knew what I had done as I was looking out, hoping she would be there, coming back, part of me hoping she wouldn’t, for her, for me, and I found the man.
*
The man is not motionless. When I first get to the window to see if he is there, it’s as if he has just arrived. It is the same every time. If I walk away and then return: he seems to arrive as well. And if I pace along this side of the apartment, he matches my every move. Following about as though maintaining the spacing between us were more important than looking in. I’d rather not experiment with the man to see how far he would go to keep this up. How remarkable to step in unison, never in turn. We step, we stand, together.
*
I suspect I don’t need to invite the man to view the scene where it happened. If he will not come closer, it is because he must have everything he needs from where he stands. He gets everything he needs from there, in what I display. Yet another piece of evidence I have preserved: myself after the kind breaking.
*
She asked often, What is it that you need? Is there something you could see shifting? Is this what you really want?
I replied, I don’t know. Forever with, I don’t know.
She stepped closer and placed a hand on my arm.
It was the last time I pulled away.
*
He, the man following me, moves oddly. His pace, his sway, all unsuspecting, except his orientation. He is always facing the apartment, me. As I reach the window, he is approaching the corner, but walking backwards, eyes pointed up. He never turns away, walks backwards, almost entirely, unless I am pacing and then he matches in sidesteps. I wonder if he blinks.
*
Her belongings are gone. Our belongings have been split, more in my favor as part of the kind breaking, including the painting, even if I encouraged her to take it with her. The gathering of things happened when I was away. At her request. When she came into the apartment, she did not have to wonder how I had departed our (my) home. Then nothing else.
Eventually, I would go home and clean up the evidence from the kind breaking. There would be nothing left to save, no need to preserve the scene. I could run the water again. Take a shower. Stop buying bottled water.
As I got to the door, turned the key, entered, examined what was there and what wasn’t, I saw the man from the window. I no longer wanted him to observe the kind breaking, I needed him to see what was left afterwards.
I put my shoes on and left. As I got to the bottom steps of the building, the man was a little farther up the street from his usual corner. I approached him and yelled out that he was too late, the kind breaking had already happened and that the scene was now exclusively of her second departing. The man did not reply, only moved backward to keep the distance he strictly maintained.
I got desperate and picked up my pace, repeating myself over and over. As I sped up, so too did he. Still slightly obscured, the man revealed nothing. I couldn’t make out his face as he seamlessly speed-walked backwards, one block after another, up and down the hills of our little valley to other valleys, the street being long and lasting. The man didn’t turn, never needed to break, pause, catch his breath.
I started to chase after him. Finally, I thought, I would stalk him, I would catch him. I began shouting, in pants, asking if he had seen her, how she had departed at either time. The man began running backwards. Eventually my voice gave out and I gave up, collapsing into coughs.
The man stopped when I fell to the ground and stayed at his usual range until I could stand up again.
I walked home, and the man followed.
*
There is emptiness after the breaking has been cleared, and in the emptiness, I look at the painting she didn’t take. I look at the patch of red, the swath of blue, the drip of black, and then a faint, white line I’ve never noticed before. I take the painting off the hook, marvel at the white for a moment, then turn it over and set it face down to lean against the wall.
*
In the emptiness, I dream a dream where I am able. I approach the man and he does not flee. In fact, in a dream I dream, he is quite stoic.
From my sleeping body, I leave as a translucent reflection and glide over to him, passing through the wall separating us, and, like any dream where you can glide, float, fly, do it awkwardly, wobbling and mistrustful of my newfound ability to glide as a translucent reflection.
As a ghost, or something close to a ghost, we come to be under the same light.
I see his face for the first time: ears; nose, a little pocked; his beard, brown turning white and overgrown; skin sunspeckled to sunburnt; eyes.
It is in his eyes where I stay. Tired, but wide and panicked. He is staring up at my window and I turn to see myself there gazing back. The man doesn’t, or can’t, open his mouth so he pleads with his eyes, with clenched teeth and fists against an impossible tensile force. I see it, a little faint line, a strand really. He begs like a fish caught on a line to be cut loose, not following at all, but being dragged. He fights back, doing his best to turn away, but whatever line is between us is drawn taut and can only go slack if he comes closer, which he won’t. He keeps fighting, but the line shows no signs of breaking.
Close up, the man is not as stoic as he seems. His distressed face quivers in the mouth, it ripples through to his body, fluttering like a hummingbird’s wings. How long before the exertion takes over, before what was already weak and forced up sets down and stops? What was quick becomes still. A humless bird.
*
Was it during the kind breaking, the breaking I forced onto her, where we cut cleanly apart a strand connecting us? Was it my severed end catching unintentionally to the man, forcing him along?
All I need to do is cut, as quickly and decisively as she had done, and the man would be released. As easy as that.
I feel the man trying to push away, but I pull back.
Please forgive me. Not yet.
