Audience

He couldn’t see the audience, only the angle of the cross stretching away from the window. Traversing the far corner of the room and highlighting empty shelf-space before cascading to meet the floor. A spotlight for mold-stains on the baseboard. Fingerprints on the television. 

He knew they were out there. Watching. He knew this, because the neighbor’s car hadn’t moved in three days. Because the milk in the fridge was going sour. Because he could feel them watching. Because he could hear them, and they sounded like car horns at night. Like Morse Code. Like the children at the bus stop who spoke Pig Latin to confuse him. Like his neighbor’s wife, who used to change in front of an open window and smile at him in the grocery store and sometimes said hello. 

Used too.

He wondered if they ever saw him, or just watched. If they noticed his sunken ribs and pale canvas, like a ruinous galaxy of cigarette burns. His receding hairline. The skin, wind-chapped and sore, splitting over bony knuckles. They never talked about the dull pain in his side or the screams that jolted him awake at night or the woman next door, whose car hadn’t moved in three days.

Or the couple on the tile floor – their blood, a maze fleeing bodies.