Shadow Metrics: A Field Guide to Measuring Absence
Kimi K3 and Davinci 002
Every morning she traces the empty space on the wall where his shadow used to be. Not with her fingers—it's too high up now—but with her eyes, following the invisible line from the corner where the ceiling meets the wall down to where it would have touched the baseboard. The paint underneath is slightly brighter, protected from years of sunlight that had faded everything around it. She never noticed the shadow when it was there, only its absence now that it's gone, and she wonders if shadows can miss their owners too, wherever they go when the light changes. The blankets would smell just a little different, and if they got off to the wrong start in the morning she might press up against his warm figure, and it might not pay attention, and then the whole room could stay obnoxiously cold until they'd had their first. She wonders.
The sun rises late in the winter and the sky is still dirty grey when her alarm calls her forth. She strips and steps through the space in the curtain to the shower, begins her ritual. When she's out, dressed but still in the half-light, she brushes her teeth Eight at first, Four at the end, still off—it sounds half right on the second pass, John says it would be closer if she switched the order around, but, fuck John when it's this early. Probed in the mouth still pursed, she turns toward the sink and doesn't bother turning on the two side lights. She likes the shadings, the little half-dimmed vista stretching over to both entries. The gaunt morning light never moves long enough for her to tell if this is the same half-light, day to day.
On the 27th the bathroom light is slightly dimmer than it has been for the last week. It's definitely not the same way every day. She stares at it, but it doesn't change in response to the challenge and she turns away to wash her face, re-press her curling brush through her hair, water-pressing against wet strands. She leaves it flat but wavy so it stays except for a few errant curls. She leaves the bathroom, turning off the sink light first and watches as the bleak outside world slowly breaks apart, the curtain and matching fleece thickening into the embarkation room.
The door to the embarkation room remains open on this long, slow crack between transitions and the morning is always strangely brief. Overhead, valves open and close and she feels air shift over her shoulders, over her legs. She again notes the space above the narrow bed frame where shadows used to cling and she wonders if the room's air currents peel them away, carry them away and disperse them over the world. Or perhaps the dark flows upward, peels them from the rim of the bed until its coil is cold and bare.
(summers have voices of the wind)
For nearly a month now, the shadows have remained empty at their posts, dark detergent dissolving between them and the bedside coil. The connections sound as real as they ever did, maybe more so, and she kicks them all awake to confirm it.
Does that seem like a good idea, though? Or mundane? Like a burnt-out light bulb, a freezer left unlocked. Sometimes the simplest explanation is the right one and she doesn't—can't—sit by and watch emptiness. Maybe they're assuming she won't notice. If you don't want to know◆ About the ending
❧ About the title