Silent Smile

Silence.  Stillness.  Scarce lighting among shadows that almost seem larger than the life of the only inhabitant of the room they engulfed.  The ticking of a nearby clock was all too unforgiving.  Mocking.  Laughing in its consistency of breaking the silence the man had now become all too well acquainted with.  A simple quick exhale was all that could be heard before the crash of a notebook hitting that very clock and knocking it off the wall.  The thunk of a pen hitting the window.  And then silence.  Stillness. 
Yes, it was true.  He was alone.  No sense in denying it anymore.  Not when the fact was so blatantly shoved into his face every waking moment of what could loosely be called his life.  Plagued by his own thoughts, even now, he had stayed up all night trying to get them out.  Trying to get them down.  But as the notebook had landed open and face up, it was clear his efforts had been in vain.  The truth of it was, though, that nobody cared.  It does tend to happen, though, that when you are alone, that means there's nobody around to listen or even care. 
Bloodshot eyes reached again for that knife on the table.  Maybe now.  Maybe this time.  Maybe he'd actually do it.  Yeah right.  Being alone also meant that there was nobody around to try and kid or lie to about it.  Truth was, he'd never have what it takes to actually do it.  Still, for some reason, knowing that it was an option did bring him some small amount of morbid satisfaction.  For a moment he considered throwing that, too, across the room.  No.  Even having it near him seemed to put him just a bit at ease.
The sun started to rise.  Dawn already.  For the first time in what must have been several hours he actually moved from his seat, even if it was only to shut the blinds.  Hiding from the sunlight now?  It would seem, like his own thoughts, that cliches had no intent of derailing their mission to plague him as of late.  He walked over to the fallen notebook and picked it up from the cover, ready to close it.  But then he saw it.  It was merely a glimpse of one word for nothing more than a split second.  But he saw it.  And that was enough to divert his attention to that page after seconds of flipping through the others to find it.
There it was.  That one word.  Right across the top of the page.  It was the only word on that line.  A note.  Written the night before last.  To her.  But none of that mattered.  The only thing that mattered right then was that his overly-tired gaze was locked upon that name on the top line.  And then...it happened.  Something happened to the man that hadn't happened in about a week.  It was something so simple, but oh the satisfaction it brought him to feel it once again.
He smiled.