Selma
by Sarah Eron

She lies in bed; it has become a common practice for her these days. Lying there. Below, from the cold of Franklin Street, the mail truck rumbles, shaking the walls of the fragile house. She squints, trying to bear the familiarity of the sound. The endless drone, the screech of the wheels as they back up. Like the ambulance the day they took him. The bed is warped where he used to lie. She lets her foot slide over there sometimes to reassure herself. Yes. Gone. But the talc powders are still there, arranged in irregular rows on top of the organ. Some has fallen . . . dustlike blanket on the keyboard. Should she clean it up? No need to now. The sweater slouches in his chair next to the Kleenex box. She will preserve it lovingly. Like his voice still there on the answering machine.

Remnants. The whole house is. Lists, un-tuned piano keys, package designs from the fifties, and letters from the war. In the attic, a printing press, ghostlike wedding gown, stiff like a frozen dancer pinned up in the shadows to a wooden mannequin. This house, a relic. Silent tomb of memory. All of these things and nothing.

If she lies very still, maybe she will disappear there. Or slide into a sleep, foot still resting in the imprint of his body. They'll find her, perhaps. One day in an archeological dig. When they excavate the house, gasping at the wonder of its ancientness, uncovering its precious treasures-spiderweb rooms long forfeited over to a kingdom of insects, floors caved in, and old shag carpets safe beneath the earth's dirt ceiling-oh-and the body, some old woman clinging to the stillness. There, alone, she lies in the bed.