Fiction

“If I don’t come up for five straight minutes, feel free to jump in.”
Then he was gone. I watched the LED strip affixed to his mask travel for a few seconds before disappearing in the black.

“The photo I keep coming back to is us standing in front of a painting: Hercules dragging Cerberus, the vicious three-headed dog, from Hell.”

Outside the window, a wasp crawls on the glass, baring its hard underside as we make our laps of the bedroom. I think about crunching it, of feeling abdomen and thorax crack between my teeth.

We had the same opening night and I know she planned it that way.

And yet, if this was a side effect, I didn’t want to get rid of it.

When the mind runs out of space, it must purge things like bad purses and key chains to make room for new memories, like the smell of menthol cigarettes on the breath of the police officer who informed me my husband had been killed.

But I was only a girl, toes curled tight in my shoes trying to march comfortably on a trail determined by other people.

I trust you, I replied, which was the same mistake I’d made all thirteen years we were together.