If We Survive This

by Racquel Marie

The single bloody handprint on the back window reminds me that miracles these days are just the remains of other people’s nightmares.

When no one was home, I would clank away at the piano precisely how my brain wanted. It was ugly and uncomfortable, but there was a satisfaction in doing something badly and completely like myself.

“I suppose I can forgive you, though. But only if this makes us even for one little, teeny thing.” I squint my eyes. “That jerky I’ve been feeding us all? Yeah, they’re dog treats.”

Violence is animalistic, but affection, it seems, can be just as primal.

His breath shudders, eyes still on his lifelines. “I wasn’t built for this world.” I do not say what I have feared for some time: I wasn’t built for anything else.

Death is finally real for him. It isn’t just some thing that happens to everyone, it’s a thing that happened to people he loved, people he knew.

We can carve away at ourselves as much as we’d like in an attempt to make the other whole again, but maybe all we’ve done is trade the same scraps of our hearts back and forth, another thing for us to share.