by Elena Rotzokou
After my husband died, the house developed a habit of correcting me. If I placed a cup too close to the edge of the counter, it shifted slightly inward when I wasn’t looking; if I left a cabinet door open, it closed itself with the soft authority of a reminder. At first I called it grief, that sensation of being gently supervised, but grief does not realign furniture or smooth the bedspread while you are still in it. Friends said I needed time, as though time were a contractor who could restore the original architecture of a life without replacing the materials. One evening, while standing in the hallway, I felt the walls narrow imperceptibly around my shoulders, not to trap me but to measure, as if assessing whether I might fit where he once stood. I have since stopped resisting the small adjustments, because it is easier to live inside a structure that is quietly replacing you than to admit that you were never meant to remain unaltered.
Elena Rotzokou is a writer based in New York City. Her fiction investigates intimacy, displacement, and the quiet surrealism of ordinary experience. She is currently completing a PhD in English at Columbia University.
Photo Credit: Photo by Rayner Simpson on Unsplash
