The Tumbling Frames

The apartment on Cypress Avenue had always felt a little off. When I first moved in at nineteen, I chalked up the odd drafts and intermittent creaks to cheap construction and an old building. I filled the walls of my studio with photos in cheap frames: my mother at the shore, my cousin’s graduation, a group shot from a camping trip. They were my anchors, reminders of a life outside those four walls.

Three weeks in, I noticed the frames would occasionally shift. A corner would tilt, as if someone had nudged it. I’d straighten them, thinking it was vibration from the trains passing below. One night, I was lying on my futon, reading by the window. On the sill, I had a stack of books and a framed picture of my father and his brother, both smiling in front of an old pickup truck. The window was shut tight, the latch locked. I’d checked it earlier because the draft was getting to me. Then, without a sound, the frame lifted off the sill and hurled itself across the room. It smashed against the opposite wall, glass exploding outward. Shards sliced my forearm and cheek. I yelped, jumping up, my heart hammering. There was no one else there. The window was still closed. The frame lay shattered on the floor, the photo slightly crumpled.

I told my landlord, but he shrugged it off, saying old buildings settle. I cleaned up the mess, bandaged my arm, and put that photo in a drawer, not wanting to throw it away. But I couldn’t shake the feeling that something had been watching me, had grown tired of the silence.

The second incident erased any doubt. In my studio, I had a large corkboard on the wall opposite my bed, covered in mementos: ticket stubs, postcards, and dozens of photos. It was a collage of my life. I came home one afternoon after a long shift at the diner, exhausted. I walked into my room and stopped dead. The corkboard was bare. Every single photo, all eighty-seven of them, had been plucked from it and scattered across the floor. They weren’t torn or bent. They lay face up, a mosaic of memories, each one staring back at me. The pushpins were still in the board, untouched. The windows were locked, the door had been deadbolted. I lived alone. I remember just standing there, my breath shallow. Tears welled up, not from fear, but from a profound violation. Someone, something, had gone through my life with meticulous care, pulling each photo out and laying them in a pattern that felt almost deliberate. As I crouched to collect them, I noticed they formed a rough spiral, leading from the corner of the room to the center of the floor, where the last photo lay. It was a picture of me, taken a year ago at a friend’s birthday. In that photo, my mouth was open in a laugh. But now, I could swear there was a faint smile on my face that hadn’t been there before.

I grabbed the first box I could find, stuffed all the photos inside, and drove to my mother’s house that night. I didn’t return for my belongings until two months later, with a friend escorting me. We packed in broad daylight, and I refused to look at the empty corkboard. I moved to a new apartment across town, one with no windows in the bedroom. But even now, sometimes, I feel a draft, and I find myself checking that the shelves are secure, that the walls are blank. I no longer display photographs. They’re all in a locked drawer, face down. Because I know that if I look at them for too long, some of them will be smiling when they shouldn’t.