Housebound by Cathy Lennon

In the house there is an indentation in the chair cushion, in the seat of the chair that a ghost sits in. In the house dust motes containing his skin drift down sunbeams playing like cine film in front of smeary windows. There is a staleness in the house. An immobility in the house. Something is lost, gone, asleep, missing in the house. She is here, solidly here in the house. Her memories, her possessions, her years of married life are here in the house. In the house there was sometimes laughter and pleasure. In the house there is sorrow and boredom. In the house there is an empty space, a silhouette of dead air at the corner of her eye. She is held in the house. Embraced and imprisoned in the house. She wonders if she will die alone in the house. She knows that there are pills in the house. Knives, chemicals and cords in the house. In the house she is invisible to the world. In the house the world is invisible to her.

Cathy Lennon is a Lancashire based writer of short fiction. Her work features in online and print publications such as Arachne Press, Flash Frontier, Ink Tears, Journal of Compressed Arts, Lunate, NFFD, Reflex Fiction and others.

@clenpen

Photo by Jez Timms on Unsplash

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