She had fluff on her ceiling fan. It just sat there on the
top of one of the blades, taunting me with all its grey curly dirtiness. I used
to stare at it when I lay on her mattress in the morning, often when she was up
already and I was in the bed alone. Sometimes when she was there with me, in
the bed, we would joke about that single piece of fluff, sitting on the edge of
the blade, poised to topple over into our world, but never doing so. I’d say to
her that I was going to clean that ceiling fan and finally get rid of that
dastardly piece of fluff so it didn’t torment us anymore. She said that she
hadn’t noticed it before, at least not until I mentioned it. I think I actually
did clean that fan and remove the fluff but I don’t quite remember doing it,
because actions like these are easily forgotten and the desire to do it was always
stronger than the memory of doing so. In any case that piece of fluff came
back. It was another piece; of course; maybe taken from the huge mound of grey
curly dirty fluff that all the separate pieces come from in this world, or it
could have been the same piece that decided to sit in exactly the same spot,
precariously like before, to really taunt me. She even told me there was fluff
on her ceiling fan again, but I never saw it or had the chance to remove it
again.
