Casings

A litany of questions asked into an absence. Am I not good enough, is there something wrong with me, is there someone else who has your heart. The jealousy gets specific and physical, the other woman imagined in unbearable detail, and the comparison becomes its own punishment.

She remembers his logic, that she had been hurt and he had been too, and that kind of pain he did not mind. Then the fight gets given up quietly. She loves him more than she thought she could, cannot hate him the way she knows she should, and cries by herself at night where he will never know and never see.