Reawakening – Flash Fiction – SoCS

I potter around, wiping the already clean hob. I rarely cook proper food anymore. There seems little point for one. The DJ tells me it’s going to rain later.

‘Thanks,’ I say, ‘but you needn’t worry. I wasn’t going out anyway.’

You would laugh at me talking to the radio. Actually you wouldn’t. You would be saddened by how insular I have become but my world, so huge when it revolved around you, has withered and shrunk like my heart.

I miss you.

It’s songs from the musicals for the next hour. We used to love our theatre nights. You would insist on wearing a suit in an age where being dressed up looked out of place. ‘Must make an effort to take my most beautiful girl out.’

I would sing the show songs on the way home as you tapped along on the steering wheel. Music that once filled me with joy is a way to mask the silence now. The radio my only companion. I am lonely.

I twist the thin gold band around my wrinkled finger.

Singing in the rain fills the kitchen. Your favourite.

I open the back door and step outside for the first time in months. Raising my face to the sky rainwater merges with tears as I begin to sing in a shaky voice. What a glorious feeling, I can be happy again. It’s what you would have wanted.

Written for Stream of Consciousness Saturday. Prompt prefix re-.