It didn’t end in thunder. It ended like a house cooling after the fire’s gone out—walls still warm, but no light left. We stopped saying I love you around the same time we stopped meaning it, and neither of us noticed. That’s how loss works: it begins politely. Your toothbrush leans against mine like an old couple at a bus stop, waiting for something that will never arrive. I watch you in the bathroom, and the ache that rises feels familiar—like a song you’ve heard too many times to sing. The bed smells clean now, detergent instead of skin. We sleep back to back, two continents that once touched, now drifting apart in the quietest catastrophe. Sometimes your hand brushes mine in the dark, and I freeze—because even ghosts can still be kind. We talk about groceries, about the weather, about anything but the soft carcass of what we were. The air between us hums with restraint. Every word is a truce we didn’t agree to. And yet, every morning, I still look at you. The light finds your hair the same way it did when love was a verb, not a relic. For a moment—just a moment—I almost believe in resurrection. But the moment passes. It always does. Now, love lies between us like an old dog that won’t die. We keep feeding it out of habit, afraid of what silence might look like without it breathing there.
Kerith Collins, a Twin Cities writer and mother of four, grew up in small-town Iowa. Her works have been published by Wingless Dreamer, Querencia Press, Silly Goose press, and Western Colorado University.