SmokeLong Quarterly

Every morning I wake with a new woman on my left. Every morning I wake with my wife on the right, and I expect her to be yelling, to be angry, demanding to know why I’ve been unfaithful, but every morning she is only ashes in an urn. Dust collects on the nightstand so I know she hasn’t emerged in the night, hasn’t taken one look at the woman in her place and stormed off. I wonder, now, when this woman will leave. I think about making her pancakes, about sprinkling my wife on top so this woman will become a little more like her. Maybe she will take her hair color, her name. Maybe she will absorb her memories, absorb everything but her breasts and she will be my wife, and healthy. I mark a tally through the dust, one for every night I should’ve slept alone.