In the Little Town of Goshen

While I was getting ready for work this morning I heard something on the news that made me stop and watch the TV.

Apparently, in the attic of an outbuilding near a house, two hired hands found the corpse of a woman when cleaning out the building. They believe it might be the guy's wife, who just up and disappeared back in March.

Hearing "Goshen" and "corpse" in the same sentence made me take notice because Goshen is such a sleepy little town. It's wedged between I-5 and Hwy 99, has a school, two or three streets, a bar and a few other small businesses and mills. I drive through it on my way home almost day, opting for the slower pace of 99 versus the chaos of I-5. This little house isn't on the main highway, but still, to think about all the little universes that exist in each little house on I peek at on my way home just seems weird. Everyday as I trekked back and forth to work, inside this little attic space a woman sat in some sort of quiet darkness. Sounds from the outside made their way to her ears but were never registered by her brain. While the rain came and went and the sun rose and fell, her body quietly rotted while in another close-by universe her husband went about his life without her.

Who knows about the little dramas unfolding in each little universe we pass by on the way to and from our lives. The dust settling on the TV, the dishes sitting in the sink, the phone ringing unanswered as well as the times when the houses are filled with fighting, crying and laughing, fill the walls whether we see into them or not.