published as nonfiction in Catharsis Magazine volume 2, 2024.
I do not wonder what you are doing now.
No, not while I eat stale cookies from IKEA, gift wrapped from my mother, and think about buying you flowers, and what would I write on that card because you don’t deserve them, but I know how I feel and it doesn’t matter what you deserve, only what I am willing to give, as the sweet KAFFEREP breaks under the pressure of my teeth and sticks to my gums. There is raspberry in its center, fitted into a heart shaped mold, and I do not wonder if your heart still bleeds for me as mine does for you.
I do not wonder if you are thinking of me.
No, not even as I scrub my dishes in lukewarm water and cheap soap suds and think about your apartment and how you slept with your back to me while I cried, turned on my left side, where I could feel the blood from my raspberry heart drip and ooze like syrup from a wounded maple tree. I do not think of you even when I dream of our last meal and how all I could do was stare, and all you could do was look away.
I do not wish to see you again.
No, not even now, as my hands quake with the ghost of your touch, and my back aches from not being held long enough and from holding far too much. My mind is not plagued with images of her face and your hands and her naked body and yours, entwined. I am not desperate for your affection, or for your voice as you told me how pretty I was in the morning, emptying yourself inside of me until the heart-shaped hole in my gaping chest was filled again.
No, not even then.
I do not wonder.
Shea Winters 