Do spaces absorb sound? A birthday party would be a case to consider. The partiers gather, parents, children. The wrapping paper’s crumpled. It falls between the arms of the furniture. The pets wander in and out with castoff and twisted ribbon.
There are many quiet thoughts under the reverberations of the real. The room is unaware of what’s happening on the inside. But some rooms have seen the child grow into a man or a child grow into a woman. Some rooms have encased more than twenty years of change. You can seek it out but there are few metaphors on the walls, which may or may not be bare, but nonetheless the room in the morning after the party is still vibrating, reminding people of the day before, those walls decorated with small, white iconic ships, crumpled paper on the floor.
Cars pass on the road outside. Soon, the moon will rise and deer will follow the day-before path into the woods. The children troop in one by one. The parents have gathered and begin singing. The children take extra minutes and dash back to the trampoline after the cake’s been eaten and their parents return to interrupted subjects.
Cars pass on the road outside. Soon, the moon will rise and deer will follow the day-before path into the woods. He remembers a birthday many years ago. He remembers his father taking the empty cake tray to the kitchen. He remembers his mother’s smile as she sliced the first wedge with the chef’s knife and carefully laid it on a plate and went to the next. He remembers the extra minutes, the trampoline, laughter from the house.
He briefly recalls the wall paper, the white ceiling. His own walls are painted yellow and in the morning the windows throw squares up that glow white. The children troop in one by one. The parents have gathered and begin singing. His son is standing by. He’s holding a knife, a silver knife, and he smiles at the memory of the knife as he holds it over the cake.
The parents sing and the children sing. His son is watching as he divides the cake into its intrinsic fractions and slices, forming the first piece, remembering the knife, this long-lived knife, which has appeared out of all these years, the same song, the same knife, the same walls painted yellow.
