Lying in the dark, a thought dances along the edges of his mind, carefully gliding over the puddles of vodka and sidestepping the scattered SSRIs.

He had always been careful to turn music on; it was the only way he could get her to sleep. He preferred a tomb-like enclosure. She was the opposite, but she was also loved by him. So he cued up gentle piano music and let it lull her to sleep. During the early days of their relationship, he slept very little, distracted by the sound and unable to settle down because of the presence of someone in his bed. He grew accustomed and eventually dependent on her body being next to his. But he never trained himself to sleep through the music, faint though it was.

When he woke to find her gone, he recalls now, there had been a power outage, or else he had been too wasted. Either way there was no music. There was, instead, silence. But it wasn’t the silence he wanted. It claimed her, unjustly.

He feels her in the silence. But he can’t sleep. So he turns her piano sounds back on. But he can’t sleep that way either.