Allison's Archives

The backsplash stares at me and I stare back with equal intensity. There might just be some entity behind the walls. But no greater cosmic being will ever suffer more than humans do because our suffering is self-engendered. I wipe the grime off the stove top the way my mother wiped blood off my eyebrow when I was younger. Some evidence should not be left behind. 

Through the windows, the sun comes and goes as it pleases, not unlike certain characters in my life. I’ll give the sun some credit—at least it brings warmth when it comes and does not demand much of me. I’m too busy to keep you company right now, sun. Let me bask in your presence when it is next convenient for me. Oh.

I clear the sink in record timing. Nary a dirty plate or stained glass to be seen. There can be no indication of my hunger. I make sure to witness the water slosh down the drain. Couldn’t catch a droplet if I tried. I wonder how many times my father caught me before I slipped too far away. How many dreams I have lost because of weak grips. How much potential I have washed down the gutter. I had so much potential. 

I look at the sun outside the window. 

I have so much potential.

There is mail on the table that I brought in earlier and I lie to myself thinking I’ll find a letter from a friend. My friends do not write. They type up reports and fill out forms but they do not write. That responsibility rests easy with me. I’d like to make more friends who write but the problem with that is we will end up talking about writing over bad coffee and cheap wine rather than actually writing. Writers are such solitary creatures. It’s an occupational hazard and an occupational blessing. Necessary for a job that revolves around rearranging twenty-six alphabets to make sense of the world. In English, at least.

I move the flyers for man with a van and maid with a mop aside. I take an envelope from the remaining stack and pry it open with little force, making the glue feel like it has failed in its sole duty. I empathize. Truly, I do. The paper slices through my palm as I remove it from its home. Immediately, my eyes flicker over to the knife block. An accidental and wrongful assignment of blame. Always the things you don’t expect that cut you wide open. Always the people you don’t expect who put your reputation on the chopping board. The wound takes time to fester and the blood is still fighting to stay under my skin, so I do nothing about it. 

Some bills. Some building updates. Some credit card offer. Nothing new. No familiar penmanship in the pile, only corporate return addresses. Suppose this is to be expected. Suppose this is ordinary and ordinary is all I can ask for these days. ‘Extra’ has been washed down the drain. I sit in inaction and listen to the refrigerator’s sermon. Are the items inside listening too? Trying to mask their expiration dates? Do they believe in much beyond their respective functions? I suppose they do. I suppose they are resolute in the position that all forms of hunger deserve to be satiated, never mind the number of ingredients or steps it takes, never mind the time it takes. 

A smell festers in the air and all sources point toward the bin. The unfortunate, temporary carrier of things we do not wish to keep around. I empathize. Truly, I do. I stand and push my chair in then fix the positioning of the remaining three until they are all facing each other like some kind of hostile confrontation or children’s tea party. It’s too hard to say which one. I bin the portion of mail that is no longer needed, words that are not necessary to make sense of my world. I tie the tops with the respect of a mourner and lift the load. I take out the trash. And that’s not something I check on after the job is done. 

Tomorrow I will have to do all of this again, I think with pain blooming in my palm, a small trace of blood to be wiped off now. It might hurt more when I run it under water. The removal of certain evidence will always hurt more than the crime. Tomorrow, however, I will sharpen the knives and stare at the scab. 

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_{The accompanying image (Det blå köket by Isaac Grünewald, 1917) serves only as a visual complement to the essay and carries no interpretive or illustrative claim beyond that.}