RDP Tuesday: CRACK

“Street Light “
LINDEN FREDERICK

In the house, down the road from where I live there’s a yellow house where somebody used to live for a little while a long time ago.

I don’t think anything bad happened in the house, or in the back yard or even in the basement with the wooden stairs that creak on their own late at night when it’s cold outside.

No. I don’t think anything bad happened in the yellow house where the rooms are empty and the toilet bowl is dry as a bone but sometimes the kitchen sink fills up with water and the water drains the same way it came in- drop by drop.

Nothing bad has ever happened in the yellow house because only one person has ever lived in it and she moved out when the man she was going to marry mailed a copy of their wedding invitation to her at work with a post it note on it that said, ” I’m sorry. I won’t be there. ”

So the yellow house, briefly lived in has only one memory and it is of a woman sitting it’s kitchen with her head in her hands. She sat there for a little while and then she got up and left and the next day and the house has been empty ever since.

Time has passed in the clockless house, and the house still has the taste of her grief on it’s tongue and all these years later it savors it  still.

The house has only one real imperfection- in the dining room running across the ceiling and down the wall near the window is a single crack.

When the sun is out, it floods the curtainless dining room with bright silvery light and the crack shrinks away from the wall and it slithers away to a dark corner until night falls.

Nothing bad has ever happened in the yellow house down the road from where I live- but I’m pretty sure it wants it too, it wants it to so badly that it can taste it.