The Long Tie

-Micro Fiction-

The day was bright and warm, but David had yet to open the blinds to allow anything to intrude on his solipsism; the lights in the living room were dimmed, and the monotonous tick of his mechanical watch, the only sound in the home, went unnoticed during his state of pensiveness. It was soon after his wife drove off, with shattered glassware scattered about the floor, that David immersed himself in the silence of his home and began a long series of contemplations.

He ran through each mistake over the course of his life and marriage. Each moment in time, which, had he made a slightly different decision, some course correction would have been possible. A single-degree change in either direction to save him from the reality he now faced.

David had recently given especially significant time thinking about the long tie inside of his closet. This tie was too cumbersome for him to wear; he hadn’t touched it in years, and for some months, he couldn’t pin down the exact reason the neckwear would periodically, apropos of seemingly nothing, pop into his mind, or why, after so many years of disutility, he had not donated or disposed of it

Only then, in the oppressive stillness of the home, did David realize why this article of clothing was so persistently on his mind and why he had yet to rid himself of it. David walked into the closet, leaving all the lights off, with only the faint rays of sunlight peeking through the drawn curtains to illuminate the bedroom. He grabbed the tie, knotted the skinny end, threw it over the top of the door, shut it, and pulled the tie taut so the end of the knot pushed up against the top of the door and below the casing. David tugged it a few more times and gave note to how much weight it could support.

He opened the door and put the neckwear around his shoulders to tie one last knot, but before he could finish, David looked at a portion of the bedroom wall between two windows. There, he saw the twin signs above their bed, which read:

Loved you then, Love you still

Always have, Always will.