On windy days she went back to the building to find the
shreds of skin he had left there. She caught the elevator to the top floor. It swagged in the bluster, north to south
with the crosswind, and so did she. Sometimes the room
was packed with people, an ant colony contained in a
plastic box , but not today. She searched for his DNA,
embedded there, picked up on the soles of shoes and
deposited, later, in an empty apartment. Her heart filled
with insects and they clawed at her sternum and her
coronary plexus and her left vagus nerve, all legs and
wings, their piercing soprano voices. She found the
pieces in corners and edges and dropped them into her
pockets, exited into the sunlight as a thief and her heart
cracked out across the lawn, a mosquito zapper. The
people ate packed lunches and watched her go with their
jellied eyes.
Anna Spargo-Ryan is the Melbourne-based author of The Paper House. Her short fiction has been published in Kill Your Darlings, and she also writes on parenting and mental health for the Guardian, Overland and Daily Life, among other publications.
