broom

I sweep the floor in the morning, before the sun pushes through the shutters. It’s not much of a floor, uneven concrete, a crack that spiders seem to always spill out from in the corner. Yet I still sweep it like it matters. The dust is fine, grey. A film that never leaves. I think it comes in through the walls.

The mattress next to me is thin,  too thin to be called a bed, and through it I feel every edge of the boxes that hold it up. Four old wooden crates tied together with clothesline and faith. They creak when I shift, a soft, dry sound like something cracking in the walls. Sometimes I imagine termites inside the wood, crawling in little lines just beneath me, making tiny cities I’ll never see.

The walls were white once, I think, but now they are the colour of boiled milk left too long on the stove and they are a grey that’s pretending not to be brown. My table stands near the window. It’s a small wooden item I pulled out of a rubbish pile three years ago. One leg is shorter than the others, so it rocks when I set something on it. I painted it using leftover tins people gave me, pinks, all different kinds. Bubblegum, coral, a strange one that dries darker than it looks in the can. The paint is uneven. It flakes when I touch it. Sometimes I scratch it just to see what colour’s underneath.

Everyone knows I live alone.
That’s not the strange part.
The strange part is that I’m still here.

Dona Celina calls to me over the wall.

"Renatinha are you sweeping again?"

Renatinha, her nickname of playful endearment, I find it cute.

Dona Celina’s voice floats through like it belongs here. Warm, gravelly, and bright in that way only old women can manage. Her ‘r’ rolls out long and affectionate. Rrrrenatinha.

I cross to the window and lean my arms on the sill. The wood is warm, even at this hour. She’s sitting on her front step, the blue plastic chair tilted onto two legs, a cloth fan in one hand and a half-dead mint plant at her feet. Her dress today is red with tiny yellow flowers. The fabric is faded where the sun hits it. Her legs are wrapped in a thick white cloth, and there’s a towel on her shoulder, damp and smelling faintly of eucalyptus.

“I can’t sleep with the dust,” I tell her.

“Dust can’t hurt you, minha filha,” she says, waving her hand. “It’s the things you don’t see that do.”

Her eyes narrow at me, like she’s trying to see what I don’t. I smile faintly, not to agree, but to be polite. She doesn’t press. She never does anymore. That’s what I like about her. She lets me keep my silence like it’s something valuable, something I’ve earned.

"Dont you get it at all, Tia Dona?"

"Get what?"

"That the only reason why I ever cleaned the dust was because I could never sleep knowing its there, like a rash!"

She stared at me, the fan paused mid-wave, the chair settling flat against the step with a small thunk. Her mouth opened slightly, just a breath, then closed again. She looked not confused, but like someone turning a word over in their mind, checking if it still meant what they thought it did.

"You think dust is the problem?" she said finally, voice soft now, nearly a whisper. “Meu Deus, Renatinha...”

Her eyes weren’t sharp anymore. They were tired in the way the sky gets tired before it rains -  swollen, expectant. She looked at me like she wanted to say something larger than words could hold, but then she just sighed.

"You’re not sleeping because of you, menina," she said. "Not the dust. The dust is just... something you can control."

I turned back from the window, the warmth of the sill still pressed against my arms. I didn't want her to see the way my face changed, how something pulled at the corners of my mouth, not quite sadness, not quite anger, just that quiet, itchy feeling of being understood when you’re not ready to be.

Behind me, the crates creaked. A spider dropped from the crack and hung in the air for a second, suspended by nothing but thread and gravity. I watched it sway, then reach for the ground like it had somewhere to be.

Outside, Dona Celina rustled in her chair. The mint plant fell over, spilling dry dirt onto the step, but she didn’t move to fix it.

"You don’t need to sweep it away, filha," she called, her voice trailing off as she stood. “Sometimes, you just have to sit with it. Let it settle.”

I didn’t answer. I bent down, picked up the broom, and held it in both hands like a question. The bristles were worn flat, grey as the floor they scratched at.

Maybe tomorrow, I wouldn’t sweep.

But today, I already did.