On a Quiet Street

by Seraphina Nova Glass

There was a gun next to Caleb’s body, but it wasn’t fired, and there was no gunshot wound.

You gave up on us when you did what you did, but he still denies it, and I pretend to believe him.

But shortly after I moved to this country that I have no business being in, the terrible night happened, and everything changed. I changed.

Grief is supposed to come in fits and starts, but hers has been unceasing, breath-stealing. It felt like the world was tilting and she had to claw and grip the earth so she didn’t slide off—a constant, all-consuming effort every waking moment.

“Y’know, you try to major in the arts in college and then realize you’ll never actually have a career and you’ve shamed your parents, so you change your major to something responsible like business and computer science.”

I know the cameras can’t see me now. They only display all the rooms of an empty house with an escaped prisoner.

I don’t know if I have found true friends or if they are both absolutely nuts.

Tonight, though, I think about how great it would feel to tie a garbage bag over his face and watch him suffocate in his drunken stupor.

Coraaaaa 😂😂😂

the speed with which decades of marriage can disintegrate are appalling.

They say feeling alone with someone else is worse than really being alone, but right now, I don’t know.