Prompt: Write a story with no dialogue.
When it began to rain Sunday, I watched the tears flood his eyes. He never told me why it bothered him so much when the streetlamps’ reflections softened like paintings on the pavement, but something about it troubled him.
He often went out late on Sunday evenings, hands shoved inside his pockets like he was hiding a secret. I wanted to ask him a thousand questions, but he always left the dishes in the sink.
I often tried to understand him, but it was like peering into a tinted window or stained-glass. He never described the cemetery, but I knew that was where he went. His clothes often smelled of fresh dirt and granite headstones. Sometimes, his hands held onto the smell of fresh picked dandelions.
I never knew why he loved me. But I let him have his secrets and that’s more than most men can say about their wives.
Sometimes, on early evenings when the fog hung like a limp canopy, I would wander to the cemetery by myself. I would try to see what he saw – ghosts or spirits or specters. It often felt like I was walking hallowed spaces when I walked between graves among the decomposing dead and their wilted flowers.
I never knew why he left me for those tombs and the empty mouths of torn-up earth, but I never questioned him either.
One Sunday, as I was crossing the gravel road to see the gravestones in the fog, a car appeared out of nowhere.
It swerved but hit me nonetheless.
I wonder if that’s why he went to the cemetery late at night & alone.
Isabelle Palerma 