shine.

All those damn canvas and Mead notebooks- they’re his whole life. His mute world is sprawled out across each room of our already cramped apartment. Mountains of them piled on the floors, or propping up the shorter legs of wobbly coffee tables- it was beginning to look as if we decided to decorate with the story of his entire existence. Some piles were so high that they blocked the light from our thrift-store lamps. The words that remained tangled in the fibers of his cadmium white canvas illuminated our walls with secrets that he never made audible. Once, I came across a notebook that was laid open neatly on the top of a pile of papers underneath the sink. Crouching down on my knees, I saw that it was addressed to me. That day, I was the first to speak.

“What is this?” I asked holding the notebook open so that the writing in question was facing him. He squinted and leaned towards the notebook from his seat on the couch across the room. I held it out further, repeating my question. “What is this?” Riley shrugged and resumed his position facing the window, counting the people outside as they walked by. I glanced at the letter again. You would hate me if you knew written between every one of those thin blue lines covering the front and back of one full page. “I would hate you if I knew what, Riley? What?” He did not move. His silence rattled inside of me, shaking loose all of the patience I had grown for his mute mouth over the years. “What, Riley! What don’t I know?” I held the open notebook in front of his face, disturbing the passer-by count he had acquired since noon. He put his head down and sighed heavily. The paper was shaking in my hand.

He stood up and, dodging the towers of his words, walked past me toward the kitchen. He made no eye contact. I chased after him shouting the entire way. “I don’t know what’s wrong with you. This has not been easy. Do you know that? This whole silent thing. It’s completely ridiculous! At first I thought I could put up with it- and I did- but now…” He turned and looked at me. I lowered my voice and my glance. “This has not been easy.”

Riley looked at the notebook and then back at me with distrust and disappointment falling from his eyes. “Look, it was open. I wasn’t snooping around.” He looked at me with his head tilted to the right, his eyes half-closed suggesting I had broken out privacy agreement. “I know I promised not to ever look through them, and I didn’t, but this was open. It was, okay? And when someone finds something written like this-” Riley turned and began banging through all of the pots and pans, acting as if he has lost something very important in the cookware. “Don’t try to drown me out.” He rummaged through the pans noisily and hard one last time before he sat down on the floor exhausted and unsure of how to avoid this confrontation. I sat down next to him. Lids to pots we never used encircled us, shining spots of reflected light around the room and over our clothes. “Please?” I put my hand lightly on his leg. “Please.” He held his tongue like always and, defeated, I carried myself into the bathroom and locked the door. Alone, in the yellow glow of the bathroom light, I flipped to the next page in the notebook, disregarding our promise. Scribbled out onto the page in tiny writing read: I tell you my secrets while you sleep.

I feel it every day.
I am still consumed.
If not you, then who?