I swallow back the lump in my throat, after she killed my parents, I’ve been… distant. And it’s not because I’m grieving, no I detest my father more than she could ever know.

I’m so lost.

I gently extricate myself from her arms. I kiss her cheek and linger there, against her skin for only a second.

“I need to take a shower” I say

She looks heartbroken and confused. But I don’t know what else to do. It’s not that I don’t love her company, it’s just right now I’m desperate for solitude and I don’t know where else to find it. So I shower. I take baths. I go for long walks.

I tend to do this a lot.

When I finally come to bed she’s already asleep. I want to reach for her and pull her soft warm body against my own, but I feel paralysed. This horrible half grief has made me a complicit darkness. I worry that my sadness will be interpreted as an endorsement of his choices - of his very existence and in this matter I don’t want to be misunderstood, so I cannot admit that I grieve him, that I care at all for the loss of this monstrous man who raised me. I remember when she had asked me “are you mad at me? For shooting him?”

I hated him. I hated him with violent intensity I’ve never since experienced. I am an orphan.

She calls out my name and pulls me back into the present.

“Yes, love?”

She moves in a sleepy, sideways motion, and nudges my arm with her head. I can’t help but smile as I open up to make room for her against me. She fills the void quickly, pressing her face into my neck as she wraps an arm around my waist. My eyes close as if in prayer. My heart restart. “I miss you” she says. It’s a whisper i almost didn’t catch. “I’m right here,” I say gently touching her cheek “I’m right here, love”

But she shakes her head. Even as I pull her closer.

And I wonder if she’s not wrong.