(untitled, unaffiliated response) [26 may 2024]
what you have to understand is this: he hated that bed. if something lies flat it was never meant to stand up, and if something is meant to stand up it isn’t good for lying flat. the springs left a crick in his back, so that he leaned every time he stood up, grumbled every time he sat down. but all forces demand equal and opposite responses, so said newton; and in the mattress, not even memory foam, mind you, just feathers and wire, there was a dent where his body fell heaviest, a dent roughly five feet in length, two in breadth, in the shape of an action figure missing its head. his pillow was too thick to leave an imprint. in its place was always a stain, about the size of a cantaloupe, which i asked him about from time to time. each time he would give the name of a different liquid; some were plausible, some not, some he surely said just to torture me with the thought of that ending up there, and in great enough quantities to leave a lasting mark. i pleaded with him to clean it so that something in the room would look nice, but no luck. he told me he once went at it with bleach until his fingers bled and that was enough. it was always enough for him, the murphy bed, which he slept on backwards; the pillow, the stain, the piles of clothes, the empty bottle collection, the broken blinds and the sink of unwashed dishes. there was a reason it was always me visiting his place and never him mine. when i would come by it was the same: he would lay on the floor, prop himself up against the radiator, back arched slightly, trying not to groan as the bars dug into his spine. we would sit, pizza and beer spread between us like a summer picnic, and chat, chat about the radio, chat about college, chat about the clouds we couldn’t see and the rain that never came, chat about that damn bed and the horse it rode in on. i would always laugh when it came up, reach over and poke his arm, tell him i’d help him save up for a proper one. he would laugh back, say it was enough. it was always enough for him. the piles on the floor, on the desk, on the counters, those were enough. the moldy tiles and leaky faucet, the loose sockets on the kitchen wall, those were enough. the pizza-stained dishes, the heinekens piled high enough to obscure the sun, those were enough. the time he spent in his studio, the time i took between visits, a day, two days, a week. it was all enough. and on the evening of our last final, our day of sweet release, he had had enough. i came to the apartment and saw the lights flashing, the yellow tape around the handrails. i ran up the stairs. he was gone; they had taken him away, first to dominican hospital, then to wherever after. they had left his things in disarray, said it was all like that when they arrived, with the piles now a blanket over the kitchen floor, glass shards embedded in the carpet and the walls, drawers and cabinets torn open with the force of a wolverine, and blood, blood encrusted on the desk, blood smeared across the window, blood pooled around the stain on the bed, blood like a halo over the cavity his body had once filled. i cried out, tried to force myself past the uniforms, grasping wildly at the bedframe, desperately wishing to restore his presence to the room. the bed sat, his angelic frame lay at rest, as if to remind me that if something lies flat it was never meant to stand up.