Across
‘Why didn’t you come back?’ -Amy
Roger looked up from the note. 360 degrees, empty, save the same grey line. The plane where the ocean kissed the sky.
The letter fluttered in his hand. His free hand brushed his temples. It tickled. Evidence of fading stubble. His eyes wandered the ink-lined shapes, failing to translate the silence between the lines.
He sighed.
‘I thought you wanted me somewhere else,’ he wrote, because he only understood the words.
She knew just the right way to shape the empty.
After signing his name at the bottom, he waded through the sole-deep water on the apartment floor, looking for a cork.
It didn’t take long for him to realize there wasn’t one, anywhere. He tossed the bottle of Syrah on the couch and ripped off his shirt. He shoved as much of it as he could inside the bottle then heaved the shirt topped sea-mail out the window.
The bottle hit the water with a plunk. Green glass alone on the sea. It didn’t shine, but it seemed to glow. He watched it bob three times, then he watched it sink.
She always saved the corks.