a moment in the day: ceiling

Down in the basement, standing on a wooden box, I hold my hands just over my head, flat against the ceiling, as Stephen uses a drill to work out the screws holding the ceiling panel in place. 

One after another, the screws unscrew and fall to the floor. Tink. The buzz of the drill runs along the panel and tickles my palms. My arms are getting tired. Tink. 

A sudden weight as the last screw comes loose and the panel disengages. Both of us work together to heft the piece of ceiling down to the floor, but as we're leaning it up against some sort of pile of basement boxes, Stephen says, "What is that?"

Extra kick to the word that. 

He sounds weirdly alarmed. I turn. But the that, the thing he's just discovered on the floor, looks like a stray, half-crumpled strip of electrical tape. 

He says, "It's underwear!"

Giving his shoulders and both his hands a kind of shake like imagining he touched it. 

I look over my head at the wide hole in our ceiling. 

Underwear just fell from our ceiling.

I say the only appropriate thing to say under these circumstances: "Take a picture."

I turn back and Stephen's already got his phone out, stooping to focus. What looked like a crumple of electrical tape is a scant, looped strip of lacey fabric in two tones, green and blue. Who knows how long it's been hiding in our basement ceiling or how the hell it got up there.

Stephen straightens, checking out the shot. I go over and crouch down to get a better look. 

"Don’t you touch it" Stephen says. "Or I’ll never be able to touch you again."

a moment in the day: text

I text my mom that I hope she has a better day today than yesterday. Tell her I love her. Immediately on my little screen are the three little dots and then she writes back me too, love you too, and a kissy face emoji. 

I go to shoot one back but the kissy face is missing from the frequently-used lineup of emojis in my phone. There are plenty of other faces, the smiley, the tongue-sticking-out, three kinds of frownies. There's the cupcake, the rainbow, and a torso wearing some sort of service cap for some reason. And then I realize something else is missing. The strings of animals I used to always have in there. The ant, spider, snake, snail. The pig, camel, bird, bird, bird. All the fish.

Those were Steve emojis. Often when I texted him some question, if his answer was in the affirmative, he would respond with a line of them: ladybug, fish, other fish, crab, heart, other-colored heart, flamingo. No words, just tiny images running in a rainbow of exuberance across my screen.

I had gotten in the habit of talking to Steve in strings of emojis, mirroring his Steveness back at him. Knowing his interests, I often had fish swimming across my text fields. Sharks and dolphins. Tiny surfing men. Fish and surfers meant yes, meant happy.

After I find the kissy face and respond to my mom, I pop over to my text thread with Steve. I look at the last message I ever sent him, that he likely never saw. Think about sending a fish out into the void. Click my phone off.