Lately, you have had trouble distinguishing between day and night, dreams and reality. You would worry about this if you didn’t have bigger concerns.

You picked the short straw deliberately, so she wouldn’t draw it. You can never tell her this. Now you think about the nature of love, that you would face them, your worst nightmare, for her.

You long for a time when you dreaded the night. When you recall things that once terrified you: muggings, drive-bys, shady strangers shuffling through alleys, they seem like quaint relics of a distant past. Now you eke out your sad, desperate life, scuttling from the sunlight like a cockroach to the gutter of your former home.

You have begun to forget her face. Last night you lay beside her, tracing the outline of her eyes, her nose, her mouth, trying to imprint them in your mind, but all you can see when you close your eyes is a vague outline, a shadowy remnant of the woman you married on a glittering summer day.

She walks up to you.