Cry

I sit through your funeral, and I don’t cry. I’m wearing black trousers and a black shirt and a gold cross necklace you bought for me even though I don’t believe in your God and I don’t believe in your religion. To my side, your mother is weeping, to the other, my mother. And I sit here, and I’m your wife, and I don’t cry and I don’t weep and I don’t stare as they lower your coffin into the ground and say a quiet prayer over the rain-soaked earth.

I go home, and I don’t cry. I see the couch where we used to lie together, snuggling together as we fight over whether we should watch the football or the music channels, and the table we ate at, where you cooked me a meal, but it was a microwave one and you somehow melted the plastic into the food, and we ate it anyway, and the place where you proposed to me, got down on one knee and offered me a simple ring, and I had smiled and laughed and kissed you. And I stare around at all these memories, and I don’t cry.

And I go upstairs and walk into the bathroom, and there’s a tube of toothpaste still lying where you left it that morning, the green paste oozing out from underneath the lid, your toothbrush lying next to it with the bristles poking out at out angles.

I cry then.