"I told you to call the real estate agent a month ago." He's standing in my doorway, long shadow staining the hardwood floors. I don't even want to look at him. Purple moons cling to the underside of his eyes. His whole body looks bloodshot. Like every bit of skin has learned how to cry. I'm sitting on my bed, not looking at him. 

"I know." I whisper. "I called him and he said he'd call me back with an appointment." I lie. I pick at a scab on my ankle. I want him to leave. 

"Well just get it done. I don't want to keep coming back here." His voice breaks, but we both ignore. He scuffs his shoes and turns around. He shuts the door behind him quietly, but it still feels so angry. Over the past few months he's learned to stop yelling whenever he sees me. He didn't cry over the moving vans or the lawyers or the documents. I did. I always thought they were empty threats. I thought we would fix things. He doesn't look like he manages to feel much anymore. His body is only the phantom of pain long dead. I grieve for his sorrow. I wish it were still inside him, eating away at him and devouring his happy memories of me. I wish he hated me. Maybe it would prove there was anything left to hate. That I was still a person. That I wasn't a cardboard cutout who someone had bought to be his wife for the past nine years. This nothingness feels impenetrable. 

I hear the sound of the front door closing. It doesn't lock. A few days ago I called him to come over. I tried to make him cry when I asked for his key back. I was desperate. Lonely. But he just dropped it into my hand and walked right back out again. The door was left ajar behind him. He didn't feel the need to shut me inside. Lock back all the awfulness that had become me. I was nothing. I am no one. I buried his key in the backyard like a dead pet. Not a dog. A goldfish. Something you never cared enough about until it floated upside down in your bowl. And then it was everything. 

I can hardly stand sitting in this bed. Sleeping in this bed. It's an ocean of covers and sheets and pillows. I drown in the space he's left. An ocean of his tears, long since evaporated, still manage to get caught in my lungs. He still makes me choke. I pull my knees closer to my chest and wince as I peel off the scab. Blood gathers in the wound, smooth and red. It becomes too heavy and dribbles down to my foot. It stains the blanket. I begin to cry. I fall asleep with tears in my nose.  

I wake up and the sun is beginning to set. Pink sugary clouds float low beneath the sky, muttering to each other. I wipe the dried salt from my cheeks. I remember that the front door is unlocked. I remember that I don't care. There's dried blood streaming down my foot, but I don't wipe it off. What's the point? I sit up and put my feet on the floor. Goosebumps race up my legs and I feel my skin constrict. Lately I've begun to feel like a snake. Tight. Like I need to shed something. I must have forgotten to pay the heating bill. It doesn't matter. I walk across the sparse room and into the hallway. The carpeted hallway that used to seem so lush and soft now scratches my feet, unbearable in the cold. The paintings on our walls—my walls—are so tacky in the pink light. At least he took our ugly sofa so that I don't have to look at it. But he left me with his armchair. This awful leather thing that I always said didn't match the rest of the room. It smells like him. Sometimes I spray it with the mostly empty bottle of cologne that he left in his medicine cabinet. I know he left it here to torture me. I suppose I deserve it. 

My stomach turns over and I guess I should eat something. I can't remember my last meal. Everything tastes like sawdust now. I open the fridge. There's a jar of mayonnaise and some worcestershire sauce. I hate the stuff but he liked to cook with it. I pull a frozen meal out of the freezer. I don't really notice what it is. I lean against the counter in my bathroom while the microwave tries too hard to underheat my dinner. I can't sit at the kitchen table anymore. That's where I signed the divorce papers. My brother came over that night. He didn't want me to be alone. I didn't want to be alone either, but anything would have been better than his eyes roving over me as I dripped tears onto the line where I was supposed to sign my name. My family has tried to be supportive. But they don't understand what their responsibility is to me. They always liked my husband better. And everyone knows it's my fault. My brother tried to comfort me, but his hands were rough on my shoulders and his condolences were tentative and insincere. 

The microwave shrieks at me and I jump a little. I pull out the box and peel off the plastic. Steam jumps out at me. It's such a liar. I know it's still going to be cold. I take it to the living room and sit down on the floor. For a moment I think I'll turn on the TV. Maybe I can try to be a normal woman who lives alone. I wonder if all spinsters eat TV dinners when they have no one to cook for. No one who can justify their struggle to keep living. But I don't know if I'm a spinster. And I don't know where I left the TV remote. And I realize that watching all those moving people while eating will just make me sick. So I shove a few mouthfuls down my throat before closing my eyes and leaning my head against the wall. 

I do this every night. Sometimes it's torture, but it helps me sleep. I just try to dissolve the world around me with my mind. I let the blackness and the softness of the world lay over me. Thick and asphyxiating. And then I build our house. I think of all the bricks, fresh and new, squelched into cement. I think of the plumbing laid carefully into the ground and I think of the nails being pounded into our wooden floors. I think of the shingles being laid on the roof. I think of the weather. The rain and the wind that flooded our front yard. The heat waves that baked those bricks into the walls, drying them and cooking the whole house further into the ground. The snow that piled on our windowsill while we were folded together in bed. I think of the problems. The kitchen stove that burned so many dinners. The radiator that was always broken. I think of all the sounds that used to hide in the walls of this house. His laughter. The small whisper of his smile. The silent way he used to cry. I think of the way he used to love me. How he would kiss my nose when I was sick. And he would massage my feet in exactly the right way when I had a hard day. And in this space of mine anything can happen. In this house where there is no heartbreak and there is no pain I'm allowed to hug him and hold his hand and put my head on his shoulder. And he doesn't yell or scream or stare right through the walls as if I don't exist. As if the ring he stills wears isn't one I picked for him. In this soft warm hell everything is perfect all over again. 

But I open my eyes. And the living room isn't as pretty as I made it in my head. My half-eaten food is making the cardboard box soggy. The steam has dissipated. I look at the side table next to his hideous leather armchair. I stare at the dark blue phone resting in its cradle. I swallow the bit of dinner that tries to force its way through my parched, dry lips. Everything is a scab. A temporary band-aid on this open, oozing wound of a home. I know I have to call the real estate agent. I really will this time. I put my head back against the cold, cream-colored wall and close my eyes. They're so very heavy. I will. But not today.