You stared at her from the doorway, the night before she had arrived at your doorstep, begging to stay the night. Her dead husband on her back.

You had let her in willingly of course, now, the stench of decay coils through your home, invasive like a parasite. Not the unexpected horror of death arriving unannounced, but the consequence of your own fragile compassion. You let her carry him inside. You helped her lay him gently in the bathtub, because she couldn’t let go on her own.

His body sits there now, submerged in stagnant water like a memory refusing to fade, while she kneels on the cold tile beside him. Her sobs rise and fall like tides, breaking against porcelain.

Her fingertips brush his decaying cheek as though touch alone could reverse the inevitable “Maybe in another universe…” she breathes, voice splintering into silence.

You don’t know what to say. There are no correct words for this kind of love.

No correct distance either.