After ten years of marriage, Harry’s dead-to-the-world state is more recognizable to me than my own face in the mirror. Through the darkness I watch his eyelids for any stirring of life. The sheet over his chest rises and falls. His head flattens the pillow, his lips part. Tranquility rests in the smoothness of his forehead. There was a time, even in his deepest sleep, he would sense my shifting and would wrap me tightly in his limbs. I slide to the edge of the mattress without breathing, lowering the comforter in micromovements behind me. He doesn’t appear to notice.

Shhhhh. The fan suggests I try to sleep, or maybe it’s egging me on. With bare feet to hardwood, I slip past it like a specter.

The full moon floods the garden in silver light. Dahlias and marigolds and cosmos have already started to bloom. They flaunt their miraculous petals and I hate them. 

The watering can makes a cavernous tin sound as I fill it with water from the hose. 

My hands and knees press against the cold earth as I survey the mound of soil. Not a single green shoot and I planted the red poppy seeds over three months ago in early March. It doesn’t make sense. The timing was right, I laid down fertile soil, I watered and tended to them as though my life depended on their flourishing. It would be so easy for them to thrive here- why did they refuse? 

Maybe tomorrow, I tell myself. I give them just a little water, like the lady at the garden shop told me. Nose to the dirt, I inhale the scent of detritus, rich with the possibility of rebirth. 

Laying on my side, I curl myself around the unproductive bump and let my tears drip onto the ground. The occasional whirring of tires over pavement, the cooing owls, mark the passing hours. 

I wake shivering with cold to the chirrup, chirrup of flitting sparrows. Wiping the soil from my cheek, I creep back into the house through the kitchen. 

The bathroom door is cracked open and the shower is on. I grind coffee beans and fill the coffee filter, then check my reflection in the stainless steel refrigerator. Splotches on my cheeks border sunken semi-circles under my eyes, like opposing archipelagos, barren and isolated. 

Harry comes into the kitchen. His eyes follow me as I pour him a cup of coffee, add cream, and hand it to him. His eyebrows stitch together, but it seems we are both lost for words. I escape to the bedroom to change and make-up my face for work.

Gretchen Gossett’s short stories have been published in Smoky Blue Literary and Arts Magazine, Indicia, Flora Fiction, and Wardgthering. She’s studied writing courses at Gotham Writers, including Intro to Fiction, Plot, Character, and Publication.