The Space Between

By Steve Gerson

"I'd get home from school," Jane said, "and Mom would holler out, 'Guess what's for supper, Janie? Your favorite. Fried chicken, mashed potatoes, brown gravy, green beans, and lemon meringue pie.'  Then we'd sit down later as a family, hold hands, say a blessing, and eat, everyone sharing their day's stories, laughing, you know just communing--a family. Isn't that what you guys did?" 

Nope, I thought to myself. Not even close. I'd get home from school to an empty house. The drapes were closed and the lights were out. No dust motes even stirred in the house's silence. On the kitchen counter, my mother had laid out four frozen TV dinners to defrost. My job was to pull the frozen rectangle out of its cardboard box, nuke the concoction at 350 degrees for 35 minutes, unseal my steaming meal from its cellophane wrapper, and dig in. 

No family meal. No dinner-table talk. No "How's your day? What's new?" The rest of my family would repeat my routine on their own. Even if we were home around the same time, we'd unwrap, nuke, unseal, and eat—in different rooms even, one in the den, one on the porch, one in the kitchen. I'd go to the basement.

No integration. No communion. Just isolation.

The space between us was cavernous. You could hear echoes in our emptiness. When I told this to Jane, she said, "Well, every family is different, I guess." There's some good news, maybe. My isolation led to quiet. Quiet led to contemplation. And contemplation led to poetry. So as I sat at my writing desk, alone in my basement, sipping on a Chianti, or two, or six, I'd write.

I looked up at the sky. To my left, the sun was setting, red and angry, muttering to itself, “Damn fools.” To my right rose a pale wisp of moon, aspiring.   It said, quietly, “Maybe tomorrow." In between the sun and moon was space, enough space to leave a message of some sort, if anyone could interpret the meaning of space between time. I couldn't.  But I’m waiting.

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Steve Gerson’s chapbooks include Once Planed Straight; Viral; And the Land Dreams Darkly; The 13th Floor:  Step into Anxiety; What Is Isn’t; There is a Season; Have Not; Who Am I Today; and Dystopia.