Spin the Bottle
Before
There was no romantic kiss at the station. The sky stood a uniform grey, sentinel the day he left. His suitcase held the dress blue shirts and pants I pressed. Crowded by the bottle he wouldn’t let go of even to board the train, even to follow regulations. The bottle that sloshed with each bump of a train station stop. The bottle he emptied before the last stop. I stood by the iron waiting for his return, a burn on my forearm in the departure rush.
After
The sky was the same grey devoid of stars. My arm was nearly healed with only a faint scar as an anniversary wound. Hangers stood empty in his side of the closet. A closet as empty as the train station where no soldiers stood. I raised a bottle to my lips to numb the pain.
Amy Barnes has words at a variety of sites including The New Southern Fugitives, FlashBack Fiction, Drabblez Magazine, Parabola, We Were So Small, Detritus and McSweeney’s. She is also a reader at CRAFT and Narratively and contributing editor for Barren Magazine. You can find her at Twitter at @amygcb.