© 2026 Steve Gray
The window in the room was, it seemed, for some reason, no larger than a shoebox, holding back the midday sun until there was a harsh gray shard of light on the floorboards. In the centre of the room stood two pillars of salt. They were roughly human-shaped, carved from the inside out by years of shared silence, crystallisation blooming where their skin used to be. Every time the wind turned outside, a fine white dust shook from their shoulders, settling into the floor cracks.
The foundation beneath them was a complex lattice of old fractures, wounds and scars. It was held together not by architectural merit, but by the sheer, weight of the roof. It was a mutual agreement of gravity; if one piece shifted, the entire structure could fall.
She stood by the radiator, her fingers tracing the exposed plumbing. On the counter sat a teacup, but the fine china was marked with rings of tea stains. When she tried to speak, a dry rattle hissed from her chest, mimicking the sound of dry leaves scraping against glass.
Across the room, he was a load-bearing wall leaning directly into the rot. Mould grew in the velvet of his collar, veining outward like dark, wet frost. He stood still, listening to the joists groan as the house settled further into the black dirt. It was an agonisingly slow burial.
Suddenly, a door hinge in the hallway screamed, a high, metallic laceration of the quiet, and then abruptly silenced itself.
He moved toward the sink, his joints grinding. He stared down into the sink, watching as he let the grey dish water drain in a slow, hypnotic spiral. The water looked like liquid pewter, carrying its dubious load into the dark plughole. A deep, hollow hunger for the sun clawed at the back of his throat. He wanted to look up, to smash the shoebox window and let the blinding sun melt his salt.
But he couldn’t move. The anchor holding him to the sink was invisible, heavy, and absolute. It was forged and made entirely of everything he hadn’t said over the last ten years. Every swallowed apology, every buried grievance, and every quiet retreat had hardened around his ankles.
The house gave another millimetre to the mud. The two salt statues stared past each other, waiting for the roof to finally do its job.
Take me now he whispered
She looked across half expecting him to be taken
By whom or what she wasn’t sure, but she wanted him gone
She then had a moment of clarity
In a low voice, barely perceptible, she said, ‘Go then, don’t wait to be taken, that won’t happen’
He had nowhere to go
What would come next, what could come next. He at the sink, she at the heater. Her mind toyed with the joy she might get from plotting his demise. He on the other hand was not at that stage yet, he had the strength physically, but not the will, he had been brought up too well for that.
She stared across the room, then finally said, ‘I guess something has to give and I guess it starts again with me, every time, it’s me, I pack up, I go and you just fade into a pile of shit, again, I’m sick of it, but it seems that this is how it is.’
Finally she moved, put her things in her blue white and red woven plastic bag, it had seen a lot of use and now it was involved in another push and shove arrangement.
He then sat and considered weeping, but it didn’t materialise, he just had a shallow vibrating head shake, one of disbelief, that yet again, he was in a state of benign misery, again.
She was off to the bus stop, two harrowing blocks away, a wandering feeble self, a mixed rage of rattled, bled dry emotions. She is hoping her sister would take her in again, her spare room was at least a simple sanctuary from various levels and types of abuse.
The bus rumbled along, changing to the next, off to the destination, across the well worn path of suburbia, history repeating, existence now seemingly fleeting.
Her sister is not home, so she sits on the front porch, the sun biting and causing a searing sensation, she covers up despite the heat.
She could hear the conversation with her Mother, then her brother-in-law. They would be sympathetic but would push her to change, asked to give in, and cajoled her to break the bonds that held her fragile being. Something about a salt pillar rang true, held to old ways, looking, when glancing away, made more sense.
A stuck state, held her soul, a grip so absolute there seemed to be little she could do. Hope, what was it and how to enact it? Hope, the only chance she had? Hope, she had to find out, she had to unravel the mystery.
Time on the porch helped
She needed a break, a chance to make more of the right decisions
A chance to be free and hold true to herself
There was injustice
There was pain for sure
Now in the winter of her thinking, would spring show itself?
A warm greeting, her Sister had been here before, then her brother-in-law ‘Tea?’ he chimed in as the sisters sat and talked. Few tears this time, just hope, just a chance to hold things together long enough for healing to take place and a realisation that he wasn’t the one for her.
