A shiver wakes me up. I grope for my paisley quilt—empty hands. I blink. He is a sleep-drenched shape heaving under the covers far on the other side of the bed, his moonlit contours no longer familiar. Outside a train rumbles, passengers nodding in sleep, comforted by their anonymity. I rub my arms yet fail to soothe my goosebumps, I hug myself awkwardly. The day he had proposed, another train had derailed somewhere, and I was still my mama's girl. It took me a night and a thousand passing carriages to realize that the stranger wasn’t him, but me.
Shama has work featured in Gyroscope Review, ONE ART, The Pierian, 101 Words, and elsewhere. She writes from an old dusty corner of the earth. Bluesky: @entangledrhyme.bsky.social Instagram and X: entangledrhyme