The Poppy Fields

by Nikki Erlick

After the funeral, Sasha felt aimless. She drifted through the blurry, borderless days. Days of sobbing and sweatpants. Days when even eating a full meal felt like a ruthless betrayal, now that Dean was no longer able to savor his favorite foods. And the days turned into weeks, those first few weeks of losing Dean. She almost thought about them as the weeks after losing Dean, but it wasn’t really such a clean break. It was a prolonged act of losing him, of coming to accept it as immutable truth. Of canceling plans bit by bit, rewinding all the tapes of their future she’d been playing inside her head. She felt like her whole body had been hollowed out, as empty as the years to come. Sasha had lost her lover, and she’d lost all the steps ahead. The vows exchanged in the same church where her parents had been wed. The house in the suburbs they’d decorate together. The children and grandchildren they’d raise and love. The debates over where to retire. Her path had been so well lit, and now she’d veered into total darkness.