The hollow slam of the front door behind her was both a comfort and a slap in the face. She stood motionless for a moment, catching echoes in her ears until she could no longer hear. Anything.

In one hand she clutched a plastic bag from which a faint aroma of cocoa was slowly seeping. In the other was a crumpled piece of paper. These she set listlessly upon the table beside the door—they were well camouflaged amid the clutter of keys and unwanted flyers and used gum wrappers that already coated its surface. She did not bother to untie her laces before prying off her shoes and kicking them against the back wall. Damn it. Gradually, she began to molt, layer after layer: coat, scarf, gloves, hat, sweatshirt, sweater, heart. Each and every she slowly allowed to grow away from her, abandoning them up for all the world to see. They fell with a sickening THUD to the floor.

She pivoted, once more attaching her previous load to her extended limbs—a bag full of chocolate and an ambiguous piece of paper. In silence she drifted down the hallway and away from the foyer, passing the cozy living room (beckoning like lover’s arms), the laundry room (a tempting oasis for all dirty socks and souls), the bedroom (with warm pillows that still smelled like Mom). The kitchen. Here she paused, floating in the threshold. Indecisive. Damn it all.

She broke through the doorway in a hush running deeper than prayer and like a magnet, drifted to the lonely gray oven beside the milk-stained fridge. She halted, and in her solemnity barely felt as her arms were lifted limply up like marionette appendages. They fell. Spider fingers (bleached and boned with the famine of fatigue) played a brief melody across the chilled stovetop—it felt unnaturally cold. Unreal. An oven without warmth. Without purpose. Damn.

Unexpectedly, her body convulsed backward. It was a small movement, barely more than a twitch. A jerk of the neck, a twist of the shoulders. Away from the oven the puppet danced. She just couldn’t look at it anymore.

To the floor she slid, ripping open the plastic bag as she crumbled with an angry strength. A few pieces of chocolate fell noiselessly to the frozen kitchen tiles (goddamn, it was cold) and she hardly cared.

“I read somewhere that eating chocolate produces the same chemicals in your brain as kissing,” she whispered in a voice so desolate it was even an alien to herself. To no one in particular.

She put the bag down.

On the floor beside her was the folded and unhappy slip of tree and machinery. She plucked it from the earth and carefully rustled it into its original positioning—a white card with a generic red heart on the outside. Dear, sweet Saint Valentine. Shaky fingers spread it open, and she couldn’t help but think it looked a bit like eagle wings, stripped of color, pigment nervosa.

“Dear Nicholas,” she murmured in a read-aloud voice, just as extraterrestrial as before. “With our love, we could save the world, if you only knew… Oh well. Happy Valentine’s Day anyway.”

Casting the unused romance card to the side, she shook herself. And into the chocolate

she plunged.