"To Pieces and To Death," by Amanda Rea

A woman alone feels deep silence and emptiness in her apartment after her pet fish dies. Outside the neighbors argue and words of domestic violence penetrate her living space and imagination. She can’t sleep. A few months earlier she’d left her husband without warning, a guy who professed his love, a guy who was really nice to her as well as strangers. All around, a really nice guy. But somehow he responded with hysterics to only things she’d said to him. Unlike her, he had refined tastes when it came to wine and avant garde films. There are some intriguing internal stories to link with her sense of loss like the one about the missionary woman who became emaciated for refusing to eat another banana, but her husband force-fed her the mush and she eventually died of fright. Another is a dream about her fish that apparently survives and finds freedom in flying. And the neighbor survives another round of domestic abuse, police tape surrounding her place. The associative leaps between encounters and thoughts are strong. Read it here in Wazee Journal.