High heels somehow have the ability to endow a sense of power and strength – they make you stand up taller, and walk with more conviction, but are unfortunately difficult to balance in, and a terrible impedance on speed when trying to keep up with the other (male) members of my team. So I have learned to travel with a pair of flats at all times. Such is one daily trade off: to be short and fast or tall but slow. Option three (to be tall, and fast) is ostensibly unrealistic for me.
Lock clicking, doors opening to the smell of new carpet. Its all as we’ve left it - walls gleaming white, glasses that masquerade in plastic put away next to the dishes from pottery barn. Appliances silent. I take a step into the home that is not mine, but for a week I will pretend. Set my bag down in the corner. Black, like yours next to it.
The home in my mind will have walls that do not gleam. They will be open and uncovered, rough with the strength of the material holding up our lives. I will trace the grains in the wooden beams into the texture of your skin, watch the world outside our windows until they turn black to mirror the world inside.
Our dishes will be cheap porcelain, with loud Chinese designs, and forks and chopsticks that do not match. Make dinner with me, and we’ll not think about tomorrow. Slices of tomato slimy between my fingers, just as the phone hums off in the distance.
For now the gleaming white pottery barn dishes will have to do. I watch you heat your milk for cereal in the morning, hair slightly askew, right leg rattling the table beneath our bowls. But you don’t seem to notice. I am looking for my keys again.