John

Zombie

That was my new persona...a dead man walking.

I have never, not when I was a teenager, not when my wife said that she was leaving, felt the way that I did when Renee' said my love wasn’t enough.

Suddenly the literatureI taught, the poems I'd read, the songs I heard on the radio, all took all new meanings. Hurtful, heartbreaking, painful meaning.

I’m not sure how I drove home, made it through the night and the rest of the week. I know I'd gone to work, because I had papers to grade, and I knew I'd taken care of Amora. Helped her with her homework, made her meals...although I couldn’t eat. I didn’t have the appetite for it. And I knew I hadn’t slept.

No, I'd spent the last four nights, staring at the ceiling, fighting the urge to call her and beg her to change her mind, my time with Renee' playing on a loop like some awful romantic comedy.

The first time I saw her walk out of the kitchen, the day I