this walking home without her, with her in that bed on the 7th floor with tubes and wires flowing into and out of her arms, her legs.
I stopped at the market to find something for only one person, for dinner, for me, for tonight, another night alone at home cooking for one.
she had something resembling salmon with potatoes and butternut squash with a plastic lid that crinkled when you touched it. The new roommate’s family were each on the phone, a video call, on speaker, having a trio of conversations at a volume befitting the inside of a jet engine.
four vials of fluid were extracted from her spine at 1:30pm as she squeezed my left hand lifeless. Life, less of it without this woman who has known pain, but not this pain.
she cannot stand up and it’s been four days.
