Each night, Meredith places her husband’s blue terry cloth robe next to her in the bed. Before she turns off the dusty bedside lamp and drifts into her dreams, she drapes the robe’s fraying sleeve across her body, hoping to feel a faint embrace, if just for a fleeting second. When she wakes in the morning, sometimes she smells the aroma of dark roast coffee wafting into her bedroom. As she journeys downstairs, the steps creek like her bones. She looks into the kitchen and it’s always empty. Maybe the aroma has lingered in the tattered walls. The walls hold a lot of history. Or maybe the aroma has lingered in her head. Her head holds a lot of memories. She keeps the windows closed during the day,
even when the temperatures are sultry. This makes it easier to feel a desperate breeze. The house is over a century old, so she realizes it’s no stranger to witnessing drafts. At dinner time, she swears she sees the tablecloth move every once and a while, especially on the nights when she cooks her husband’s most cherished meal of beef stroganoff, garlic potatoes, and red peppers. She knows that your eyes can play tricks on you, but she’d rather not blame her cataracts. After the sun sets, the same routine begins. Some people
fear ghosts, but Meredith fears missing out on what could have been. Time is an excruciating toothache when it doesn’t give you what you long for. Meredith learns that moving forward is even harder when you want to be haunted by the past.
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Zach Keali’i Murphy is a Hawaii-born writer with a background in cinema. His stories appear in The MacGuffin, Reed Magazine, The Coachella Review, Raritan Quarterly, Another Chicago Magazine, Little Patuxent Review, and more. He has published the chapbook Tiny Universes (Selcouth Station Press). He lives with his wonderful wife, Kelly, in St. Paul, Minnesota.