A normal retired Monday

The house is quiet, the furnace is temporarily silent, the only sounds the dog’s footsteps following up stairs, down stairs, her nails clicking against the hallway’s wooden floors. The computer dings that you have a new e-mail. You're waiting, thinking objects may come alive at any moment, the yellow walls start to shimmer, a bust of Beethoven begins to smile and frown, an angel painted on a bowl sinks and soars, three figures that were drawn last night, a pleading woman in the foreground, two men behind her, left and right, begin to dance in place, a stone Pisces holding up books moves its lips, bats its eyes, the floral prints on the carpet spin like a kaleidoscope, the pillow in the dog’s bed curls and moves in a dream in its sleep. The phone rings five times, your voice calls out from the answering machine please, please leave a message, and then the house is quiet again, quieter. So used to voices and radios and airplanes and barking neighborhood dogs, all that resonance; the quiet and the aloneness, the old songs in your hollow head are deafening. Outside, the mail is suddenly dropped in the creaking box by following and preceding footsteps; someone should oil its hinges; there are no messages in the box, no sounds, no breath or movement closing in from the past or inching towards the future; just two thin bright shiny circulars and a water bill.