Please, come

They were the whitest, skinniest, longest legs she had ever seen on a man. Sometimes she wondered how they managed to carry the rest of him around – not that there was much to carry. Tom was always lean, even before this happened. And now she was speeding away from those legs, from him, as fast as her little car could go.

Alice could drive all night and into the dawn and still not come to the end of those legs.

The sarcastic part of her mind asked what other body parts would she meet on this mad flight. An Arby’s sign shaped like his nose? Fence posts that were really finger tips? And the corn fields on either side of the dark highway, all those thousands of ears - it didn’t bear thinking about.

It would be simpler if she couldn’t still smell him on her clothes. If she closed her eyes, she could taste his skin. He was a part of her, she knew that. She didn’t know he was a part of everything else. Foolish to think she could ever leave him behind. Foolish to think six feet of earth would change anything.

Alice pulled over. The sky had begun to lighten and she could see the grass beneath her feet was yellow and soft. She kneeled down and stroked it with two fingers, the way she used to stroke his hair out of his eyes when his fringe grew too long.

“The funeral’s at two,” she said. “But I can’t do it alone. Please, come.”