The next morning, she finds yesterday’s coffee
still in its carafe beside the sink.

Suddenly she is folding
herself onto the kitchen floor,
holding herself in her own arms.

She is here, breathing in, breathing out.
Alone. In their kitchen. With the coffee
he made.
The last thing
he made.

Jennifer L. Freed likes writing very short stories, which often tell themselves with line-breaks. She is the author of When Light Shifts (Kelsay books, 2022), a memoir-in-poems about the aftermath of her mother’s cerebral hemorrhage. Please visit jfreed.weebly.com.