The Truth

Narrative peice; perspective from an inanimate object

Everyday he comes home, he does the same routine. He opens up my body to find that there is always room for him. It doesn’t take him long to find a hanger to place his coat on. He gently closes me, bringing my broken body back to wholeness. The man stares into my glossy eyes hoping to find some answers because today he looks defeated. His eyes are heavy, deep dark ci...rcles are now permanent fixtures on his face. His hair is unruly and even his hat can’t hide it. His body is hunched over, arms dangling to his sides. Seeing that I have no reply for him, he shuffles his feet as he walks towards the couch. He throws his hat on the stand next to the couch, takes the remote from a-top of the T.V and turns it on.

I really want to help him, I do, but all it seems that I can do is reveal the truth.

He sits on the couch with his feet on the coffee table and remote on his pot belly watching the daily news. Unaware of anything going on around him, his wife comes home from work wondering what they are going to eat for dinner while his children are outside playing with their friends. His wife tries to ask him how his day went, but he always mouthed her same thing, that it was “a good day”. He doesn’t bother asking her how her day went, so she retreats into the kitchen to prepare dinner. When he is done watching the daily news he takes a bathroom break so he won’t have to during his viewing of nightly news and sitcoms but the remote stopped working so he irritably left the room in search of batteries.

I really want to help him, I do, but all it seems that I can do is reveal the truth.

I see the clock in my reflection and it is almost dinnertime now. Any moment the kids will come through the front door I stand next to and disrupt the apathy of the house. As anticipated, I see the doorknob turn and the door violently opens, barely missing my face but hits the wall next to me leaving a dent in the process. The four children pry me open and throw their backpacks in me, a place where they don’t belong, a slam me close. I read his lip as he tells the kids to stop shutting the closet so hard. One of them kicks me repeatedly to spite their father and he finally gets up from the couch. His grabs the child by the leg and hangs him upside down while the others start to kick me, thinking this is a game.

I really want to help him, I do, but all it seems that I can do is reveal the truth.

My hinges and nails begin to loosen. Gravity is not my friend right now. I’m getting bruises and scars on my wooden skin. My head violently hits my body again and again and each time I feel looser. Slowly I slide forward, desperately trying to hold onto my flesh but I was never blessed with hands. My face cracks and detaches, my vision is becoming distorted and blurry, and finally my spine fractures and fails. Decapitated, my face lays shattered, resting on cold tile. From one view, I see the kids’ menacing laughter, in another, the man’s heated eyes and another, the woman’s distress. Finding me no longer useful, she sweeps me up and places me in a dark place with smelly, dirty things, never to see the light again.

I really want to help, I do, but they sweep away the evidence, burying the truth.