Moon Lorka

Being married to Moon Lorka was never a fairytale. If anything, it was a storm in slow motion, a crash you saw coming but couldn’t swerve from. He was your high school boyfriend, your first crush, the boy who smelled like cigarettes and rebellion. Moon was always the one laughing in the principal’s office, bloodied knuckles from some hallway fight, already on a first-name basis with the local cops by senior year. His grades were trash. He never went to college. But he had that grin, dangerous and magnetic, and he said things that made you feel like the only girl in the world. So you married him. Even as he slammed doors more than he opened them. Even as his voice, once velvet, turned into a blade. He was always on edge, unpredictable. He could make you laugh like no one else, but he could also cut you down with one line. And he did. Often. You told yourself it was passion. That love came in wild, ugly shapes sometimes. But then came the silence. One evening, a message blinked on your phone. Just one word: Goodbye. Then nothing. His number was dead, his clothes still in the closet, but he never came home. No note. No closure. Only the echo of his name in your mouth, like a curse you didn’t know you were still saying.