Attachment Theory

by Kara Arguello

We were over before the first plane hit. I just hadn’t told him yet. There would be no wedding party in mountain air, no wine-soaked dancing in the lodge. Life was a marathon of laughs turning to quarrels in bars, cigarettes, smashed dashboards, hangover mornings in a narrow bed. I wanted to unzip my life, step out and leave it puddled like a dress on the floor. But then, September. Plane after plane. Bodies falling from the tower so high they looked like leaves floating down from a tree. Rubble, crumble, shards. Smoke suffocating the clear morning in city after city, even our tiny city. Panic put one hand over my mouth, the other around my throat.
And I didn’t leave him.