The Cyclical Night by Nicolette Wong

Her stiletto heels are drawing music on the cyclical night. That’s all she cares about—even as her husband weeps in a reclining chair, his accusations like a ghost wind blowing through their soon-to-be vacant apartment. As she speaks she breathes life into space again, leaving behind the moment when she thought herself pregnant: the panic, the fear of confinement and guilt over the phantom fetus growing in her womb. A throbbing life one had to take responsibility for, a life born out of a marriage without love. How could she—or anyone else—bear such cruelty?

‘The baby never existed. It was a mistake,’ she says. He doesn’t believe her. Years have passed; he still fails to taste the wildness in her smile. No, she doesn’t lie. She has only willed herself to live a promise she made, in her youthful days, until the phantom fetus came calling: ‘Come and sign our freedom away.’

Her man trails on, haggard and stunned. He stares out of the windows as if the drama would pass with the next hurricane. But the roof of their domesticity is shaking, ready to be blown away along with other houses in their neighborhood. All is growing fainter at the end of the road where an accordion is playing: her future.

‘This is what we’ve come down to,’ he says.

‘We’re not responsible,’ she says.

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