The Nine Stages of Heartbreak

Short Story by Zoë Mertz

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Shock

I walk in the front door. My mother’s brow is furrowed. My little siblings’ heads are bent together, watching me take off my shoes, hang up my coat. My mother holds out her arms. The gentle pressure of her embrace sends fissures streaking across the eggshell-thin dam I’ve so carefully maintained as you hugged me goodbye, clinging to me like a lifeboat, as I turned my back on you and your face disappeared from my view and my life, as I listened to your door click shut and walked back to my house alone for the first time in months. And the floodwaters come rushing.