I haven’t seen her smile for a long time. Seven months to be exact.

Fragments of what she used to be sometimes flash in her eyes, but then she’ll look away, leaving me wondering if I imagined it.

I miss her smile.

The day he left (for good this time), she showed up on my doorstep with vacant eyes and ten dollars to her name.

“I need a place to crash,” she said simply and then proceeded to fall asleep on my couch for three days straight.

This is when I realized there is a way to die while still living. Even though the heart still beats its relentless pulse and the brain still fires off its messages, there exists a disconnect. A bridge left intact, though burning, hanging threads of possibility and regret.

Today I mustered up the courage and invited her for a picnic. Just us two. She’d recently moved back to the city and had gotten a place of her own.

Possibility was soaring high in me, high enough to risk regret. But before I could say a word, she stopped me. Wordlessly. Irrevocably.

It was her smile.