anushree nande

The Quality of Silence

I shift into the shade of the Swedenborg chapel, eyes resolute on the reliable flowers on its lawns, different every season. But you wait just beyond the periphery, almost transparent in the white-hot harsh light of this late summer afternoon. The 86 bus halts, then rumbles past me. I convince myself I heard the swish of your sundress as you stepped onto it. I keep walking down Trowbridge.

At Sumner St., I sidestep a couple walking their dogs––two cocker spaniels––slouchy, tongues lolling, too tired to even pretend to be interested in the spicy fried chicken I carry, the paper handles bending to the shape of my fingertips. On the blustery night I walked you back to yours, I held a crooked umbrella, awkward and useless against the rain plastering our hair to our skulls; on the spring Saturday we walked down Newbury, it was your hand in mine. Later, we sat in a corner of the Boston Public Library courtyard, the cool stone benches beneath our palms. Your tote from the Strand Bookstore lay propped between us, a remnant of our first trip as a couple that you later forgot at mine and never returned for; it carries nothing of the argument, and the little annoyances we should have dealt with but instead allowed to pile up because of course we were strong enough to weather them.

The other day I found a half-read book within it, one that I was reading that week and forgot in the wake of everything crumbling away. There is now a note slipped within its pages, scribbled over with an imaginary response that will mark my place for as long as I need it to.

As I walk further past Trowbridge, you continue to follow at a distance and I cannot explain when that awareness, that knowledge, transforms from sharp to fuzzy to a presence scattered—and as I turn into my side street, I wonder if this is how everyone continues to steam ahead even as they are slowly made and unmade by the fragments foraged along the way. I cross over to the other side of the street, scrabbling in my pockets for the keys, and narrowly avoid stepping on a complex hopscotch grid. I catch myself and walk around an orange blossom, chalky and a little blurred in the sticky humidity, pausing for a beat at the spot on the pavement where we last hugged, close to a year ago. The gate squeaks, then clicks into place behind me.