the neighbor

ordering food at a restaurant that went under, many years ago. i vaguely remember reports of the owners beating the staff with metal kitchen utensils when they overcooked the salmon or plated the sauce incorrectly. after they went bankrupt, they burnt the restaurant down in the middle of the night. first, the wife was simply hitting the walls with an axe she stole from her neighbor, shattering the glass of the windows all over herself. i suppose that damage wasn’t brutal enough to satisfy, so the husband walked to the gas station a mile up, bought lighter fluid, and set the building on fire, with his wife beside him. the new owners rebuilt, using almost identical furniture and wallpaper. it is eerie to walk into, still to this day. it is like stepping back in time, before the gun had gone off, before the knife had sliced. i sat there thumbing the menu, watching the night break. the dark empty blue slowly swallowing the light of the sky, like a drop of dye into water.

the woman that lives above the restaurant used to live in my apartment. she moved out after only a few months; i watched from my window as she jostled bags into her car in the middle of the night. she had a personality that was utterly foreign to me; the look in her eyes, the way she carried herself. often when i meet strangers, there are aspects of them that echo my memory of old friends i no longer know. whether it’s the way their mouth forms around certain words or their tendency to laugh in a certain way. in everyone, there are pieces of friends i loved. but not her. she was nothing and everything i had never known.

she wore long, beaded necklaces and sharp pointed heels. when i’d run into her while she was carrying groceries, her hair would be gently tied up and her cheekbones lightly flushed. she’d decline my offer of help, with a reluctance that permeated the air around us, but never enough for me to ask again. i once watched her stand up on the ledge of her balcony, hands outstretching, until they finally seized onto the edge of the roof. i watched until she got off, followed the way her knees never quivered.

i watch the door open and close; couples flowing in and out. The clacking of heels over and over again. the sharp whirr of the wind entering the restaurant, tip toeing around the tables. a friend from college used to tell me that i remember the past as one whole as opposed to in snippets. it’s hard for me to remember when something had happened, only that it did happen once, and is no longer. there was a time when my emergency contact was marked as my “life partner.”

the tables around me are filling with people; oddly proportioned families and groups of friends pretending they want to be together. i’ve picked my plate into nothingness, scrapped every crumb off with my finger and onto the grated texture of my tongue. as i sit, time is passing and becoming hollow. she is gone from me now, in a way she can never return.