Sound inside

The Sound Inside 8/23/19 30
BELLA(to AUDIENCE)
Three days go by.
And then a fourth.
Christopher doesn’t come see me during office hours.
III
Throughout the October recess it rains dramatically. For six days straight. A
cold, hard, pulverizing rain. The kind that ruins umbrellas and strips the
trees of any remaining leaves.
That following week, in class, he seems distant.
After the writing exercise, while he’s packing his things, I approach him.
“Hey,” I say.
He says, “Hey.”
I ask him how he’s been.
“Good,” he answers. “Busy.”
I say, “You’ve been working hard, I take it.”
He says that his novel’s sort of taking over his life.
“That’s great,” I hear myself reply.
I tell him that during class I noticed that his attention was somewhere else.
“You seemed adrift,” I say.
He replies, “I just can’t stop thinking about it.”
“Your novel,” I offer.
“Yeah, that,” he says.