The Sound of Her Still

The room is silent. Not the quiet of repose. But the quiet of waiting.

Photographs are gone from the mantle, just the ghost of dust where frames once sat. Floorboards creak under no foot. The air chills but is not sharp—rather it clings, rich and palpable, like something unseen in the rafters.

He has not spoken aloud in two weeks. Not since the last neighbor called, and even then only with a nod. The soft clearing of a throat. The language of men who understand grief to be a private god.

The chair opposite him is vacant. But not. Not really.

She had always sat there. Always.

Even now, his eyes drift toward the worn divot in the cushion. He does not see her—no, he is not mad. Not yet. But he sees the echo of her, the memory she imprinted. The crook of her weight in the seat. The wisp of her hair in the sunlight. The suggestion of her fingers twitching, that old compulsive tic she could never quite break—pulling at the hem of her sleeve, over and over, like she was sewing things unseen.

She is not here.

And yet:

He cannot cross the room without shuffling wide, taking care not to pass through her.

He cannot hear the kettle whistle without hearing her voice in the other room, You’ve let it go too long.

He cannot sleep with the door shut. She had hated closed doors. Said it made the room a coffin.

The last fight had been about flowers.

She had brought them home. Yellow ones, already drooping, ashamed to be alive.

He had told her he didn’t like the smell.

She had told him she didn’t care.

That night, the vase cracked in the sink. He hadn’t meant to. Not really. She hadn’t cried. He had. But she packed her coat anyway.

She hadn’t left, though. Not in the way one does when they pack their coats. Not through the front door, not into another man’s bed. No. She had stayed. In the most violent way a person can stay.

The stairs in their house are steep. The railing unfinished. Her hands had been trembling.

Or not.

He tells himself she slipped.

He tells himself many things.

He told the police what they needed to hear. He told her mother what would wound the least.

He even told the mirror the truth once. Once.

But she is not here.

Except she is.

He hears her.

Not all the time. But when the tea boils, when the sun hits the rug in that bright stripe she used to lie in like a cat, when he sighs after a drink and his throat flares—then he hears it.

A breath.

Soft, and slightly to the left of his own.

He knows the sound of it. Knows the cadence. It is not memory. It is not grief.

It is her.

And it does not fade.

---

Last Thursday, he saw her walking down the street.

Not truly her, of course, but a woman with the same gait. That particular thrust of the head forward, as if battling a wind that wasn’t there. He tracked her with his eyes until she disappeared, then returned home and opened the closet she used to keep her coat in. The coat was gone.

Had been gone a long time, he knew that. And yet he checked again.

He ran his hands along the inner seam, hoping to discover something of her—a thread, a wrapper, a hair.

He found nothing.

But his fingers came back cold.

---

At night, the house breathes.

He hears it. The stretch of floorboards no longer burdened by his weight. The soft creak of the door that no longer sticks. The wet sound of teeth against teeth—hers, he swears, grinding softly the way she used to when the thoughts bit her from within.

One night, he set a glass on the windowsill and watched the condensation gather. Beside it, a second patch of fog.

A twin breath.

He did not look to his side.

He spoke.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered.

And her breath vanished.

But it left frost.

---

He no longer tells people he lives alone.

Not because he lies.

Because the word alone implies a certain hollowness.

And this house is full.

Of her.

Of the echo of her.

Of the conversations that never came to a close. The kiss withheld. The scream that built behind his teeth too long and turned to metal.

He speaks to her now. Carefully.

Not all the time.

Only when the quiet sharpens.

Some mornings, he awakes to the sound of humming—so faint it feels like a vibration in his teeth. He had mocked her humming once, called it tuneless. Now he finds himself trying to remember the shape of the notes, the motions to accompany them.

Once, he did.

The sound stopped.

And then he heard something else.

Not her breath. Not her voice.

The stairs creaking.

Step. By step.

But backward.

As if someone had descended, and now climbed again.

Retracing their retreat.

He did not move.

He sat very still in his chair, teeth pressed into a silent scream.

And the air closed in around him.

She was not there.

Except she was.

---

He removed every photograph.

The reminders stung less than the fabrications.

Now, his mind conjures her in real time. Sitting opposite him. Humming. Biting her fingernail. Smirking at the idiotic things the news would say.

But sometimes, he imagines things she never did.

Her hair brushing the ceiling.

Her shadow slanting the wrong way.

The way her tongue might have continued to grow after death.

He does not trust these images.

But they are here now.

She is here now.

And some nights, he thinks he can feel her pacing inside his ribs.

Like she is still looking for the exit.

Like she never meant to stay.

But he will not let her go.

Not this time.

---

The house has grown strange.

Doors open to the wrong rooms. The attic bulb flickers even when the switch is off. His toothbrush is wet when he has not brushed his teeth.

And once—just once—he smelled flowers.

Yellow ones. Wilted.

He wept so hard he broke a tooth.

---

They found him months later, seated in the chair, dried blood under his fingernails from clawing at the wall behind him.

His mouth open.

Not in horror.

In conversation.

There was no evidence of another person in the house.

Only a faint breath mark on the window beside his chair.

Two chairs facing one another.

Two indentations in the rug.

And in the trash bin,

a broken vase

and the soft, rotted pulp of

yellow petals.