Bill Yarrow 2

When Carlotta left me, I cried

into my soup. I shriveled into

harsh mathematics. A decade

later, I was living on Iowa Street

with Karen. She had goldfish and

good taste. I loved her for her fat

neck. We drank sinewy Dos Equis

and played Mahjong. In March,

I developed that cruel facial tic.

That precipitated the divorce.

At the thought of losing her, my

naked heart contracted into a span.

But I knew one day I would replace

her with a cat, brutally neutered.