cracks

For Amy A.

My girlfriend was digging around in my basement yesterday and discovered a crack in the foundation. She's good at discovering that sort of thing. We spent a half hour looking at it, trying to figure out if it was worth worrying about. She said I should probably just call someone, and we decided to call it a night and went up to bed.

That night we woke up to a rumbling. I thought it was an earthquake, but she ran downstairs. The crack was now several feet wide and stretched the whole length of the house. And it was starting to suck everything nearby in. A few boxes had already tumbled into the abyss, but the suction wasn't powerful enough to suck either of us in yet. We ran back upstairs and bolted the door, and stared at each other.

The floor gave way and everything was sucked into a vortex leading into the gaping abyss. We held on to each other, because nothing was so terrible as the idea of losing each other into the nothingness. And for what felt like weeks the only thing I could feel was her body against mine, until my arms were too tired and weak to hold on, and then she was gone and it was just nothingness.

We woke up in a bed just like the one we were sleeping in and went downstairs to a house just like mine. I can't tell if the sky has always been so pale or if color always seemed so pale. I'm still afraid to find out what's different about this new world. I'm still not sure if I should apologize for letting go.