Hamilton Heights
by Ryan Sartor

He rang the doorbell and felt his phone.

“Is that you?”

“Yes.”

Inside the hallway, he spoke to her, the door opening into the mattress, into the middle of the room. College papers, handwritten letters, personality quizzes and mood questionnaires, assigned, filled out, used as bookmarks. Plates, bowls, cups, smaller bowls used as cups, a magazine, nail polish, lipstick on the dresser, the kitchen table, the bench against the back wall. He held flowers, soap, mint leaves.

Her eyes widened. She crouched, looking up at him.

“They’re violet,” she said. “They’re green.” Her sweatshirt drifted off one shoulder.

“Do you want me to move the mattress?”

“If you want to.”

He dragged it past the kitchen into the bedroom onto its frame.

She put a mint leaf in a Dasani bottle, sat down at the table, watched him return. The sunlight caught her catching him. Through shadows they became blue, black.

“How do you feel?” she said. He felt fine.

She called out each variation. The sun was at her back.

Ryan Sartor (@ryansartor) hosts The Difficult to Name Reading Series. His short stories have appeared in The Collapsar and Atlas & Alice. He lives in Windsor Terrace, Brooklyn.

Image via Creative Commons.

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