The day is long by Guy Yasko

She waits for him all day. Where does he go? When will he be home? Why does he leave me? She didn’t think about him when the sun was out. She sat in the window and watched the birds in the bare trees. She watched pigeons take in the sunset on the roofs above the street. When night fell, she burrowed into the covers on the mattress. She hears the door open, then his heavy tread and his home-from-work sigh. She cocks eyes and ears and watches the kitchen. He takes a cabbage half from the cupboard and attacks it with brobdingnagian bites. She winces at the vegetable smell and the sound of saliva sucked between teeth, tongue and half-chewed cab- bage. She burrows into bed once more and shuts her eyes, only to be woken again by his arrival on the mattress. She listens for his breathing to slow, and when it does, she settles herself into the hollow of his chest and purrs.

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