Forbidden Fruit

The things which are in this world are finite. Perhaps something essential, an inner fire, was removed as the fruits came through your envelope? Or maybe I do not have eyes that can see the thin sheen of beauty over the mechanical surface of the universe anymore.

Or maybe what I have done has leached the world of color, just as it has smothered the house.

All that I had gained, all that I had built, it’s… gone.

The futile cardboard skins of instant dinners have returned to the refrigerator, replacing the variety of foodstuffs and persistent salami. The stacks of books have given way to shelves of emptiness, a neat and orderly shelving of tome after tome of blank pages. The smug yellowness of the house, the oily beigeness of its air, is no longer a part of the knowing emptiness. It is simply silent.

The windows do not look out on the same gardens, or any gardens at all. There is no flickering change in the corner of my eye, no gleam of other sunlight, and in fact no weather at all.

( I suspect that I may have killed the house. )