The Hour I Heard You Breathe In An Empty Room

I knew you were gone when the room breathed in without you and still sounded like your lungs.

The sound came from the corner near the window where the light always pooled at dusk thin and amber and patient. It was a soft intake of air followed by nothing and it hollowed my chest before I could stop it. I was standing with my coat half on my keys already in my hand ready to leave and the moment pinned me there. The apartment smelled of cooling tea and rain drifting in from a window I had forgotten to close. Outside a siren rose and fell and did not matter. Inside everything tilted toward that single sound and waited for it to happen again.

I did not call your name. I had learned better than that in the months since your death. Names were hooks. Names pulled things closer than they were meant to be. I set my keys on the table slowly and listened. The light near the window flickered not enough to draw attention to itself just enough to feel deliberate. When the room breathed again I felt it in my own ribs like a memory of being held from behind.

I sat on the floor and pressed my back to the couch and let the hour pass. Nothing else happened. When the light finally faded into evening and the room grew ordinary again I stood and left as if the choice had always been mine.

It happened again the next night and the next always at the same hour when the light shifted and the city quieted into a different kind of noise. The breath never came from the same place twice. Sometimes it brushed past my ear. Sometimes it stirred the curtain. Sometimes it lived in the dark space behind my shoulder. Each time it sounded exactly like you had when you slept deep and unguarded. Each time it left me shaking.

I began staying home. I timed my evenings around that hour and pretended it was coincidence. The apartment learned my waiting and adjusted itself. Shadows lengthened where they had not before. The air thickened slightly as if holding warmth. On the fourth night you spoke my name between breaths and I closed my eyes so hard it hurt.

When I opened them you were there not fully not firmly but enough. You stood near the window with your hands loose at your sides as if you were unsure what to do with them now. The light cut through you softly leaving your edges pale and wavering. You looked at me with the same careful expression you had worn near the end when every movement cost something.

I did not run to you. I did not cry. I stayed where I was and let the distance teach me what you were. You said my name again and waited. I answered and felt the word leave me like a promise I had not planned to make.

You told me you were bound to breath. To the places where air changed hands. You said rooms remembered the people who learned how to be quiet together inside them. You said you could not stay long and you said it gently as if trying not to bruise me with the truth.

Our nights took on a careful shape. You arrived with the light and left before it died completely. You never touched me and I never asked you to. We sat across from each other and spoke in low voices about nothing urgent. You listened the way you always had with your whole attention as if the world were not pressing on you anymore. Sometimes you laughed and the sound startled us both.

Winter came and sealed the windows tight. The apartment grew warmer and the air heavier. You became clearer then. Breath lingered in the cold and gave you definition. I could see the rise and fall of your chest even though I knew it was borrowed from the room. I watched it anyway. Desire threaded itself through restraint and made something quiet and aching between us.

I began sleeping on the couch so I could feel the room change when you arrived. Sometimes I woke to the sound of you breathing close and lay still afraid that moving would break the shape of you. Once my hand drifted toward where you sat and stopped just short of touching the air that held you. You watched and said nothing. The silence was louder than refusal.

Spring loosened the city. Windows opened. Air moved more freely. You faded faster. The breath that held you scattered too easily. You told me that summer would make it harder for you to form. You said heat stole shape. I listened and felt the coming loss settle in advance.

One evening you did not appear. The hour passed and the light changed and the room stayed stubbornly empty. Panic rose fast and sharp. I stood and opened windows and closed them again trying to trap air the way one might trap a thought. When you came the next night you looked thinner less certain. You apologized without sound and I shook my head because apologies felt useless here.

The truth arrived slowly the way it always does. You told me breath was a shared thing and that staying close to me took it from somewhere else. You told me I had begun to breathe differently. Shallower. As if listening more than living. I wanted to argue. I wanted to say love had always changed my breath. I stayed quiet instead and let the words find their place.

The climax of us came on a night heavy with humidity when the air barely moved. The light pooled thick and gold. You stood very close and for the first time the breath between us synchronized. In and out together. The sensation was intimate and unbearable. I realized then what it would cost to keep you. I realized I was already paying it.

I said your name and then stopped myself. I said I loved you and let the words fall where they might. I said I would not let the room breathe for me forever. You closed your eyes and exhaled and the sound carried everything we had not said.

You leaned forward and rested your forehead against mine. The contact was brief and warm and final. The room breathed out and did not breathe you back in.

When you were gone the apartment felt larger. The air moved freely again. I sat on the floor until the hour passed and then stood and opened every window. Summer came and went. Autumn cooled the nights. Sometimes when the light shifts just right and the room grows still I think I hear a familiar breath and smile without stopping my own.

I live now. I breathe deeply. And every so often when the air changes hands I remember the way loving you taught me when to let go.