Once Betrayed, Twice Shy

And he stays

FARAH

I wake up and I know immediately what day it is.

Not because anyone here knows — no one here knows. It is not information I have volunteered and not information anyone has thought to ask for. My body knows. The way bodies remember anniversaries whether or not the mind wants them to, the way certain dates have a weight that finds you regardless of where you are or what your circumstances have become.

Twenty two. I am twenty two years old today.

I lie in the new bed in the room adjacent to his and I look at the ceiling and I think about last year’s birthday. The party. The white dress I saved for three months to buy. Caroline’s smile that I thought was genuine and wasn’t, and the woods, and the rain, and the hill I fell down, and everything that came after. I think about how comple