You’d mentioned wanting to join us but had to see how you were feeling. Should I wake you, then? To give you time to get ready? As it hit a quarter to eleven I jumped in the shower and was expecting to see your door open when I got out; to hear the clinking of your spoon against your cereal bowl in the kitchen. But as I walked into the hallway in my towel your door was still closed. I dressed, combed my hair, and packed my knapsack for the day. At eleven I peeled open a can of Whiskas for Chloe and let Al out into the yard to pee. And as I stood there watching him sniff about I fought an almost overwhelming urge to check on you. You’d been having restless sleeps all week. Maybe you’d had another bad night. You’d resent being woken. I was sure of it. But if I didn’t it would gnaw at me the whole bus ride, at least until I got your text — “Sorry, I slept in. Send photos.” — but what if that text didn’t come? I’d be in the middle of the protest nauseous, ripped through with worry, noon, twelve thirty, one o’clock, Ana saying, “We can go home if you like,” and yes, I’d have to come all the way back, an hour on the bus, always taking a goddamn eternity to get anywhere in Ottawa, calling the house over and over and if you didn’t pick up what then, 911, the ambulance, the medics already outside the house when I arrived…

At three minutes and forty-five seconds past eleven I climbed the fifteen steps to the second floor, walked past the bathroom still humid from my shower towards your bedroom at the end of the hallway, placed my hand on the cool metal of the doorknob, and at four minutes past eleven turned it with the care of a minesweeper, extending my left arm slowly, taking a half-step into your darkened room and glancing towards your bed.

My eyes find your body in the dark. And as your body comes into focus something inside me collapses. Caves in. You are still and unconscious. Eyes closed, mouth agape. Lips parted, like a cheesy perfume ad. I’m looking at your body and I cannot comprehend it. Why?

It is in-between. I cannot understand your body because it is caught between two distinct possibilities:

a) You are asleep.

b) You are dead.