I am having a real day of it. Silences stretch like spider-webs between the hours, imperceptibly growing in the corners. I get up from my bed thinking I am headed somewhere, but by the time I get half way across the room I seem to have forgotten where I’m going, so I stand there with my bare feet on the cold floor, reading up the spines of coffee table books, thinking  how do these things happen? The light outside the windows is soapy with the early morning and I can hear the trucks – big trucks, eighteen-wheelers – on the street, tossing their weight over the potholes. A pile of clothes sits bunched on a suitcase where I never unpacked; I think about laundry. In the kitchen the teakettle is cold on the stove. A head of garlic has sprouted a brilliant green arm, like an alien trying to reach up to the pots. I kick a shoe in the hallway and it tumbles to where the garbage sits waiting to be taken out. I feel a kind of sympathy for the shoe. The quiet by the door is thick as fog.

Things edge like this into full blossomed morning, when the sun climbs out from behind the cement of the city and my apartment starts to chirp. The radio announcer is talking about crosswords. The tea kettle hums a quirky Italian harmony, imported and re-gifted to me by my parents, who seem to think that Italy’s the only country worth a dime. My best friend on the phone is talking about love; she’s in it or she’s out of it – I’ve lost track – but I like the sound of her voice on the line, like a song I’ve heard before and missed. I think about the wires, telescopic, stretched along a highway for miles, over the heads of truckers pulling into rest-stops for gossip and Mona’s coffee: the sounds of humanity in motion. “Hello?” she says, and I think “I’m still here” but say only “uh-uh,” as if not wanting to assert too much too soon.

And then I am alone again, the quiet, soft and pliable, like wax on a hot day. The sun collects in puddles on the floor, catching the yellow edges of my plant, which I have forgotten to water. I go into the kitchen, stare into the fridge, open the freezer, close it.  I stare into the fridge again. I close the door. An empty feeling grows inside my stomach. I go back to my desk, where the computer’s screen is blinking cheerfully, and for a second I can see myself turned inside out, bones and guts and organs out in the open for anyone to see, perfectly clean and presentable, like an anatomy doll. The image is so vivid I look down at my shirt, and, mentally, I fold myself back up. I wonder if I am losing it. I wonder who could tell me.