“Where did you go?” he asked. She had been silent for almost 10 minutes, staring to her right as if there were a TV hanging across the room on the wall.
She turned her head back toward him, but her eyes remained unfocused. He considered slapping her back to their place and time. He hated resorting to violence, but sometimes, she pushed him too far.
“I was envisioning my life without you,” she said. “And I have to say, it was all pretty fantastic.”
It was the same every day. To the train. To work. Back again. To the train. To work. Back again. In her seat, pulled from her book by the memory of a shell on an outstretched palm, she gazed out the window at the tunnel rushing past, hoping to catch a glimpse of who she was, who she wanted to be, who she lost.
The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog, who turned out only to be resting, and that was the last mistake the fox ever made.
The dress slid up, snakelike, over her body. He had watched this for years but had never tired of it. He had asked for a miracle, and there she was, all she had ever wanted to be.
She held resolutions in her hands like feathers, then released them, not even with an exhale, just with the wind. One stuck to her before letting go, another fell to the ground, but several caught the current, rose into the air, took wing. She brushed her palms together and went inside to get to work.
His car was a shield, silvery defense against everything. Fast, slow, taking a turn, it was all the same, safe, only place he could stand the others, stand himself. His music. His smell. His belongings scattered around the floor.
There was a lot he hadn’t told her. She couldn’t have known what it meant when she told him, from the passenger seat, that she didn’t love him anymore. The small explosions in his heart governed his speed when he left her standing on the curb outside her house.
On the windswept hill, she buried three stones in a bag, one for each of them. They had all been wise, each of them walking away resolutely, sure of what they would find on the other end of their journey. They had taken everything precious, left her the night and the glow of that odd star. Their quest had only just begun that morning. She kissed the newly upturned earth, hoping they would return someday to rest awhile there with her.
100 Proof 