She's Alone

Martina sat up quickly. She had fallen asleep again. Her room was
dark now and she sat there on her mattress and waited while life
floated back. Her apartment was just a quiet lonely place with dark
empty windows and gray rooms again. The sun had left in those few last
hours and she was faced now with another evening alone.

She stared on at her closet. The doors were a dull gray sitting there,
looking back at her. She gave a stretch and with her arms pulled
herself up. Slowly she stepped out to the hall, her new white socks
pressing deafly into the gray carpet. It was a bleak looking stretch of
hall. Everything was gray to her. She leaned up against the wall and
just stayed there awhile looking down her apartment.

Everything was so still. Her socks padded in silence down the hall to
the living room with the wooden futon with the black wool blanket. She
stopped in front of the sliding glass door and looked out over the
third floor view. Everything was gray outside too. The last of the sun
coated the wet wild grass and oak trees on the hill beyond. Everything
was colorless and she was inside it.

Years ago, when she was a little girl, her parents bought a purple bike
for her. She would ride it round and round; going on trails; pedal
around the lawn; visit friends in her small village. She had blonde
hair back then and always tied it up in a pony tail that would bounce
along with her, with each pedal, gliding and breezing in the sun,
traveling with her in that long ago childhood countryside.

Years later she left to America. A friendly Idahoan family had hosted
her and she lived in a pleasantly decorated room assigned for her. She
stayed in there, scared to go out to that foreign unknown world. Sons
of the family came to her and talked about guns and trucks and she
listened.

She turned from the glass door to face back into her apartment. In
front of the futon, stacks of wedding announcements were piled on a
coffee table. She had been writing out each name and address on each
envelop for the guests that would come. She did this for hours;
meticulously drawing out each letter, each word -Smith, Idaho,
Robinson, Nevada, Banks, Florida, Soijkova, momma, papa, Czech. She had
so many more to go.

In two months she would be married. In two months. That fact keep
resounding through her head, softly, quietly, a dull gray reminder. She
waited for the date in that apartment. Waited for those two months to
pass. Waited for the words to be finished and the envelopes sealed.
Waited for her fianc?e to come and move her away. Move her to some
country side house near a river where she could raise a family.

She walked around the apartment, looked out windows. Opened cans of
noodle soup. Tidied up the bathroom- reaching into the cracks, touching
the dirt into the rag. Her dad had asked to sell the purple bike. She
wasn't going to use it. She was gone away; across the world.

She walked back to her room and laid back down on the mattress. The
ceiling always looked farther away than it was. Maybe it was the dieing
lazy streaks of gray coming from outside. She remembered the sensation
of closing one eye and reaching out with a hand. From her fingers it
looked like she was almost there; almost touching the bumpy shadowed
surface. Her eyes moved along the corner above the closet, over the
gray doors. She placed her arm back down. She laid as still as the
room; arms at sides; legs set out. Peace was in this stillness she
decided.

The phone rang beside the mattress. She rolled over and picked up the
receiver. The voice spoke over the line. "Ryan!" She replied. "Oh Ryan,
I've missed you so."