Ewa hasn't left the house for a week.

Ewa hasn't left the house for a week now. She's been sitting among Snickers wrappers and blue lighters. In front of a large-inch plasma TV. She has speakers placed throughout the house, the announcer's voice resonating throughout the room, in the kitchen, over the simmering steam in the pot, shaking the windows, shaking the bowl of cereal and milk. The weatherman has been slightly hoarse for three days now and is wearing green.

Ewa has been sitting by the large window overlooking the vast street for a week now, counting the cars that pass by. She bets herself how many cars will pass before 12 p.m. She bets herself how many cars will pass before 1 p.m. She bets herself how many cars will pass before 2 p.m.

Ewa isn't in a bad mood. She can't type because her fingernails are too big. She can't clap her ears, even though she'd like to, but there's not enough room to do so. She can't go down the stairs because it's terribly uncomfortable. Ewa doesn't look in the mirror; she looks fat there. Ewa doesn't eat dinner, afraid of the freeloaders who peer through her large window, with the faces of people in red cars and the legs of neighbors' kittens.

Ewa picked an apple from the apple tree without Adam. He wasn't there. She ate it and gained a tremendous amount of weight. Now she's sitting under the tree, autumn is coming, other apples miss their nephew, falling on her head. She's already wearing a whole apple pie. Nothing about all this is going right for her. No one wants these apples, no one ever eats them. The grass is covered with nonsense, green, hope, and all that.

Poor Ewa, the neighbors say, who are better off, because they sit in other trees, they say, poor girl, she's unlucky, she can't remember anything, I don't want to clean, I don't want to cook, I don't want to raise a child, I don't want to shove apple pie in his mouth, which is made on her head anyway. So she wouldn't care where he was. That apple pie. But they'd quickly descend, quickly slide down the bark with their feet, starlings would come and peck out their eyes, birds would wonder for a moment why they were so quick to eat cherries—emerald cherries, or blue cherries, or catkins. Black cherries are bad, black life is miserable. And when they get down, Ewa thinks and imagines that one of them will approach her. He won't have the same lofty prospects as he did up there. He'll be blind, but a blind man who wants her.

Ewa, wake up, it's me, your alarm clock. You know, I've been watching you for a few days now, it's been a week, sitting in the same place, though I can see a little behind the clock, usually at noon, so it doesn't matter. I see you night and day, sitting here miserable, completely helpless. Are you afraid someone's attacking you? Far too much TV. Please, put it on, I'm even more bored than you are. You think it's a luxury, sitting around doing nothing, waiting for things to happen, but for me, work is important, it's like food, it's my only daily bread. I wish I could call you again, or have you look at me in panic. Back then I felt alive, I felt it was giving you some kind of rhythm, that you were afraid of me. Now it's all gone, and I don't feel good about it.

Ewa snorted, wrapped herself in a blanket, and said nothing. She covered her eyes with a goat, which was once small and jumped up and down hills, now someone has trapped her in a picture, she doesn't seek people's applause and has seen darkness, just as she sees, even with her eyes open. Oh, if only she were still sitting under that tree, smelling the apples on her head; it doesn't evoke anything like Newton's. Nothing happens, I'm sorry, thank you, or maybe even on the balcony?

Then people passing by could offer her a glance, offer her attention, offer her a small piece of memory, there on the balcony, possessed, wrapped in a blanket, not bad, or perhaps utterly hopeless, because she has no makeup.

Hello, Ewa, it's me, your comb, calling to you. I'm calling to you from the distant abyss, from that abyssal closet, the compass lies beside me, reprimanding me for my confidentiality. But I'm speaking to you as a friend, I want you to listen, I want to tell you somehow, sensibly, slowly, that all this hurts me deeply. It's been a long time since I've seen the dawn with you, or caressed the blue of your eyes so close, it seemed like it still wasn't enough, as if your hair seemed smoother next to me, better, as if everything were perfect, as if this day were dawning for me. I won't complain anymore; I can see your bleeding heart from under your red-striped blouse. Okay, not today, then tomorrow, not tomorrow, the day after tomorrow, but please, let it be at least in your thoughts someday. I want you to understand.

I don't know what he wants me to understand. Selindion sings that when she was little, she didn't love anyone, just for fun, she thought it was okay. Oh, Selindion was careless. How can you do this, you can't do this, without a heart, to deceive a boy like that from a postcard, then seduce him and not please him. I would honestly cry if I could, if I believed in love, and I don't believe in love. Oh, it's hard for me to live with this, but somehow I move on and I'm normal, I have ears, eyes, neck, I'm alive and I am what you want me to be. But until today, because today is the anniversary of the week when I haven't had a single viewer. No one watches me when I go to the supermarket, or anywhere else by the tram; a flap has fallen over their pupils, maybe a note with some inscription. Because I've been sitting at home for a week. Because I've been here for a long time, and I don't want to go out at all. I'm staying. Until I start. Until they find me dead, probably, with my mouth stuck open in a cake tin, breadcrumbs and a piece of the wrapper that covered the butter in my hand. I wanted to bake an apple pie. It didn't work out, oh well. But it was terribly dirty in here.

Indeed, everything was strewn about. Some yellowed leaves from the apple tree, some almost-love letters, some kisses from fun times, some longings unorganized. Everything was terrifyingly, disgustingly ugly. The kind that when you see it, you break out in a rash, and a red ring appears before your eyes. Ewa was distraught. It was past noon. A turning point, because she'd been here for a week. A turning point, because she'd already been putting up with herself for seven days.

Something was supposed to change. Things were supposed to be different; starting two weeks in an empty house was a bit much. Two weeks of hiding out, well, that's not appropriate. Left, too much like a mental illness. She wanted it to be beautiful, to be green, for them to clean up the leaves and trash around her, for a prince to come and have her children, for everything to be blue, red, and colorful. She wanted things to be different.

Nothing changed.