By: Elizabeth Goodleigh

The pinks of the sky had yet to make a dent in the darkness that permeated the bedroom. The room was still.

The stillness was fractured by a half-assed pied piper tune, which only lured 1/2 of the hungover couple from the nest of comforters.

Kathleen groggily searched for the nuisance with blind fingers. 

However, by the time her fingers brushed it on the bed side table, the ringing had mercifully ceased. 

She had not bothered to open her eyes. Her sleep addled brain concluding that she would be unable to see in the dark room anyways, so why expend the energy?

Kathleen replaced the phone on the bedside table and returned to the warmth of the body sprawled on the other side.

Morning came steadily to the beat of the second hand, gracefully tumbling through the windows of the 1 bedroom apartment and tickling the eyelids of its occupants.

Once more the morning quiet was horrifically pierced with the perky upbeat ringtone. 

“Peter, answer your phone.”

The only response this muffled command garnered was the continued ringing of the phone.

From the depths of the knotted sheets, a single right hand ventured blindly to the bedside table, snatching up the phone and returning to the warmth of the blanket cocoon.

“Hello?”

Kathleen wearily mumbled into the phone, while the fingertips of her left hand crawled across the blanket covered landscape of the bed in search of the phone’s owner…

“Kathleen where are you?”

…except her fingertips found nothing but the empty expanse of a cold bed. 

“I’m in bed, like any sane person, this early on a Saturday morning”

She finally opened her eyes in confusion after her wandering fingers found no sign of her husband. She vividly remembered him coming to bed with her last night after a night out with all their friends and he doesn’t usually get up early the morning after he drinks…

“In bed?! Kathy it starts at 8! Is your phone off? I called you like 5 times before I decided to try Peter’s phone.” 

…except that didn’t really happen, did it.

“The funeral starts in an hour, you better get your ass into the shower. I’ll be over in 5 minutes.”

The beep that signaled the end of the call fractured her bubble of contentment as her breath hitched in her lungs. The peace that had been carefully crafted by her dreams began to crack, and the trauma of reality clumsily tumbled in. She shattered.

Every night, she goes to sleep wrapped in his arms, a mirage that not even the light of morning can disperse immediately, and for five minutes she is able to breathe because his cologne still tinges the morning air. 

Now, she struggles to draw a breath through her sobs as the dream from the night before wreaks bittersweet havoc on her sanity. 

For five minutes every morning she unwittingly clings to the alternate universe her dreams offer.

Now, she burrows deeper into her blankets in a vain attempt to warm the chill of reality that settles in her soul.

For five minutes he makes her breakfast. 

Until the poisoning of her early morning butterflies reminds her of the nuclear explosion that has rendered her every inhale poison.

For five minutes he gets ready for work before bending over her to kiss her awake…except he never actually makes it that far; because his five minutes of existence runs out just short of him pressing his lips to hers. 

A marriage now reduced to a limited time only fantasy. 

‘Forever’ compacted into 300 seconds, except small infinities aren’t truly enough to satisfy her hunger for his presence.

Then her time is up and she is forced to remember the truth — that Peter is dead — and then she loses him, all over again, just as violently as she had the first time.