You wake up every morning instead of not because for three minutes you’re too groggy from the night, too blinded from the sun, too hung-over from the alcohol to remember how he left you. You wake up every morning instead of not because of those three minutes when you stretch sleep atrophied muscles, when you rub the flakes of dreamless slumber from your eyes, when you search for his warm body with your free hand. You wake up every morning instead of not because it takes three minutes for you to realize that the hardening lump of flesh your fingers find is all that’s left of the man you married three years ago, all that’s left after you slipped the poison into his tea two weeks ago, all that’s left after the six days you carefully sliced him apart and ate whatever evidence the state could have used to convict you.

You wake up every morning instead of not and cry for the rest of the day.

Not because you miss him and certainly not because you’re sorry.

But because you’re still hungry.

And you’re scared of what you’re going to do next.