The Unmaking of June Farrow

by Adrienne Young

It was one thing to miss her when she was gone. It was another to miss her when she was still here, in this house with me. For the last few months, I’d found myself longing for the end as much as I’d dreaded it.

The kind of relaxed, lived-in love where you woke up together in the morning was one of them.

I knew she was sick, but I wanted to believe that there were pieces of us that couldn’t be touched by that shadow—the pieces that made us human.

I could tell by the pooling warmth spreading in my chest that it wasn’t real. I was seeing something that wasn’t there. But for once, I forced myself to stand still, pressing into the vision instead of driving it from my mind the way I usually did. I’d always run from it, but now I was leaning in to that feeling, making the sense of familiarity widen inside of me. I could almost touch the thought, as if my mind were reaching into the air for it. But slowly. Carefully.

“A witch to do the devil’s work,”

He could sense it, and it played right into all those Bible stories he knew.

the people around us seemed to forget we were there. Their conversations grew louder as the song drew on, and I couldn’t stop thinking that where we stood was the center of something, a place that created the kind of gravity that made galaxies.