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had laughed and pondered over together. The beautiful clothes
that still smelled like him. They would be gone soon. She gath-
ered them and put them all out in the front parlor. At least this
way she wouldn’t have to look at them and wish.
She didn’t taste the soup that was burned, and she didn’t
notice the stale cereal. Her dreams were full of shadows hiding
around corners and beautiful green birds licked by flames who
dissolved into black ash.
She had thought they would be married someday. She
supposed he did not feel the same. Three years, seven months,
one week. Thirteen hundred and eighteen days. Thirty-one
thousand, six hundred and forty-seven hours. 1,898,820 minutes.
113,929,222 seconds. It hadn’t all been bliss, but she was happy.
Now, she couldn’t think.
She left a trail of water droplets from the sink to Zipper’s
bowl. They would dry eventually and anyway she didn’t see the
point in wiping them up, nobody would step in them. Zipper
always made his own mess around the water and food bowls.
She had thought she would be able to put it into words
better. She’d thought that having such a gut-wrenching feeling
as she had that she’d be able to describe it as gut-wrenching.
However, she decided, gut-wrenching is reserved for things such
as the intolerable pain of a great loss, of hearing suddenly of bad
news, or of a great and terrible devastation. She had felt gut-
wrenching on that day, but this was the sudden pulling of heart
strings; the slow, constant, and consistent magnetism of longing
and belonging. The ever-so-urgent draw to pull a fire alarm, or
light a match, yet the ability to do so is just out of reach.
Perhaps tomorrow, or next week, and the opportunity will
rise to the occasion. She knew that wasn’t true though. She
considered that humanity is cursed with the gift that the age of
technology has given: knowledge. It will not be next week, not
next month. She knew they would never be together again, the
grinning blond plastered across his Facebook wall told her that.

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