The Electric Blue

The storm outside mirrors the one inside me. I watch lightning fracture the sky, each illumination revealing more of what I've lost. Sarah left three weeks ago—took her clothes, her books, the good coffee maker. What she left behind fills this apartment like water I'm drowning in.

I find myself swimming through memories at 3 AM, surfaces barely breaching before I sink again. Her hair, that wild dark cascade that always smelled of vanilla and something metallic—like pennies, she'd say, but I think it was the iron of her own stubborn will. I can still feel it across my chest, waking me from dreams where she's still here, still pressing cold feet against my calves in winter.

The thunder rattles the windowpane. I'm at the sink again, staring at my reflection—thinning hair, eyes that have forgotten how to look hopeful. I should cut it. She always said I'd look distinguished with shorter hair. Sarah's name catches in my throat like bone.

Lightning strikes closer now. The room strobes with violence. I'm swimming through photographs on my phone, each one a different depth of water. There she is, hair wet from rain, laughing at something I said. There's us at that hotel in Montreal, her hair fanned across the pillow like ink on paper. There's the last one—she's looking away, hair obscuring her face, already gone.

I delete them all. One by one, they disappear like bubbles surfacing and popping. Gone.

The storm passes as suddenly as it arrived. My phone buzzes—a message from her lawyer about the divorce papers. I should feel something, but I'm just tired. Tired of swimming upstream against a current that's been pulling me down for years.

I reach for the scissors I bought yesterday. The first lock falls to the floor, dark and weightless. Another follows. Then another. I don't stop until my fingers touch scalp, until the bathroom floor is covered in what used to be me.

The stranger in the mirror has hollow eyes and newly exposed skin. Something about him looks ready, finally, to stop swimming and just breathe.