Spiral Notebooks Series - Joseph

There is an empty hollow in my bed.

This depression where she laid her head, sometimes weeping, sometimes smiling. I would come home to find her curled there with some dusty old tome or a battered blue spiral notebook. She would glance up at me with this reserved smile that said, "I'm happy you're home but don't expect too much."

When we met it was like finding God in a tin can. She was 16, I was 24. I looked out through the marred glass of the studio window in time to see a swirl of blond hair like gold silk. I ran to the hall to see a girlish figure vanish around a corner. When Albert introduced us I couldn't think what to say to this shining creature who looked so out of place in this dingy radio station.

I was in love the instant those eyes turned on me. When those pink lips parted and this rumbling, raspy, slipping voice slid out I was lost. This girl-child was what I had been searching for... she was beautiful and burning but sad. Her face was young but her eyes old and hurt. She could have crushed my heart in her hand, but instead she smiled and said, "I'm Leah. It's a pleasure."

Years passed and I gave up all romantic hopes. Leah was too beautiful, too brilliant for me to ever hold. She would never want plain awkward Joseph. But she did. She said she did and backed it up. She backed me into a corner saying, "You have some silly idea that you're not good enough for me, when the opposite is true. I love you and I'm older than I was so let's do the right thing and be each other's rock."

And we were. And we loved and laughed and wept together. There were never two people more in solidly in love. We brought out the beauty in one another and put it on display for the world to see.

I was happy. She was too. Most of the time. But there was something she kept hidden. Some secret sadness stashed inside she would never show me. A struggle I could not help her win. Something she told only to the dead pages of her notebooks. And finally the strain of wrapping this hurt became too much and she left. With a bag over her shoulder she got behind the wheel of her old car and lit out for somewhere I could not follow.

And left me here. With a stack of spiral notebooks to answer my questions. A stack of wood pulp and words in dark ink to unriddle the riddle.

So I wait and read and write my own notebooks. When she comes back I will say, "I told you I would wait. I told you this would still be home and the lights would be on. I read the notebooks and wrote my own for you to read." I know she still loves me. I know she is, like most young people, looking for something ethereal and intangible. And I hope, I hope to the God I've never believed in that she finds it. And comes home.

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