Jillian always told me that my plans were stupid. We'd be waiting in line for a restaurant, or sitting in the dark in the back of a taxi cab, and I would try and bring it up, just to have something to talk about. What would we do? Where would we go? What was her weapon of choice?

She thought I was so stupid. She hated all that stuff about me, you know -- she hated the books I liked, the movies, the games. She was tall and blonde and ethereal, the kind of girl who could have stopped a sunset just by asking, and I was her rebellious phase -- her geek of a wife with the short hair and glasses and nervous personality.

Sometimes I wonder if she liked anything about me.

I shouldn't be writing about this, of course. I should be pursuing all those fanciful plans I made, picking up my survival backpack and rushing to raid a grocery store. But I think I'm realizing that I have no idea what to do. I never thought my plans would have to be anything more than fiction. And... I never thought I'd be facing the end alone.

Too bad that wasn't in the pre-nup.

I sat in the back row, a little fold-up chair,

Rubbed my hand over my neck,

Thought of how it wasn't fair.

She stepped lightly cross the grass, her face all aglow,

She clutched her bouquet close,

And I wished I didn't care.

Our love, I told myself,

Would have been too good, too rare,

Of course none of it mattered--

I'd never kissed her, never dared.

Roxanne was slumped over the desk, staring out the glass doors, the glare so harsh she could barely make out the used Hondas.

A woman entered, heels clicking on the tile, chin held high, so that she was looking down on Roxanne, despite being 5'1". She looked wealthy, but rich people didn't live in this town. They especially didn't get their nails done at Amy's.

Roxanne helped her, then slipped out for her break. The sun was beating down, but she found a little shade by the dumpsters. She leaned against the one-story building, puffing a cigarette.

She wasn't jealous of that woman, for all that she was dolled up, seemingly confident. Under that veneer of leopard print she was probably just scared. There was a reason people like that wore sunglasses indoors.

Roxanne didn't want style for the sake of snobbery, a life spent clutching so tightly to money that you never spent a dime.

What did she want? A cruise. Diamonds. People to listen when she spoke.

She had always planned on going back to school, traveling. Course, she'd always put it off. There was always tomorrow, she'd said, when she found another day had trickled by while she'd stood still. She was forty now, tired, with permanent lines by her eyes.

Her fifteen minutes ended. She stomped the cig on the concrete. Amy said if she worked real hard, she might make manager.

Roxanne chuckled at that. She'd never learned ambition. Wasn't gonna start at Amy's Nails.

I have a tendency to get lost in my head, my own narrator, waxing lyrical about the smallest of moments -- the pretty girl in Spanish, the boy who said he likes my hair.

I always forget the tulips until I pass by them, the ones my mother planted beneath her window. The make the shining sun look almost washed out compared to their thick buttery yellow, the same shade as the cake she used to make for my birthdays.

The tulips make me smile, every time. And every time, for a moment, I hold the memory close, as if it were a precious jewel, or an egg kept warm by my heart.

I just want it to stay.

I don't remember what the cake tasted like.

At night, I tumble asleep, uneasy. I never remember my dreams.

She sits across from me in English Lit, curly brown hair and the sweetest smile, all furtive and embarrassed. In dreams, I graze my fingertips over her shoulder blades, press my lips against hers, hum into the back of her throat. Instead, my words catch in mine, and I wonder: how can I ever hope to win what I can't even admit to wanting?