I imagine myself locked in a confessional, etching his name into the wood and striking matches against my skin to light one votive candle for each day that i have ever loved him. I breathe in the smoke when i am finished. When I say his name, it sounds like a sin.

My blood moves like thick molasses when I wake up. They say that the best way to attract the things that you want is to avoid thinking about them altogether. I start by deleting pictures of him from my phone. The pressure of my finger on the glass shatters the screen.

His bed was never big enough for the both of us. I turn away from him and he turns towards me - I turn back to face him and he shifts away, a constant revolving door of fleeting affection. It was never tender. His gaze was non-committal, but intense. We never spoke about it.

It always felt like practice.

When I finally face the wicked witch she sings to me a soothing lullaby, speaks in sonnets that contradict the lore about her. She asks for my truth and I give her a blank stare and hear myself say that it feels like my bones are on fire but nobody can smell the smoke. I am healing, but I am healing the way a broken bone does when it goes untreated for a while. Crooked, wrong. She buys me another drink and reminds me that even Persephone didn’t know better than to fall into the hands of Hades.

I still see him in the ashes.