How to make scrambled eggs

Ingredients:

-6 eggs (because you haven't eaten in a while or in case she magically reappears in your life)

-butter (you used to call her buttercup)

-salt (you're still salty)

-her absence (it makes for quite the garnish)

Step 1: Get out of bed

You don't want to, but your body has a subtle way of demanding things even when you feel defeated. In some strange way, your brain likes feeling needed because you remember wishing she needed you.

Step 2: Go to the kitchen

Take note of the tile floor and the way the coldness mirrors the rest of the world. Play a song immediately because the silence will remind you of her angelic voice in the other room, "What are you making?".

Step 3: Open the refrigerator

This is a daunting task, but it's a tiny win for you. Your appetite left when she did. Your favorite foods now flavorless, the colors of fruits and vegetables grey like skies. Process the void of decision making. Remember what Nietzsche said and make a small joke to yourself about the fridge being an abyss and if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you. After contemplating the state of your life, find the egg carton, white as her teeth.

Step 4: Take out the eggs

They're cold in your hand. You reflect on her skin, the warmth of her, how she'd hug you in the morning and steal your heat like it was really hers, how her skin was an eternal lantern. Set the eggs down gently, the same way she departed from your life.

Step 5: Crack them

One at a time. Slam them on the countertop like your heart on the pavement. Take note of the sound. Smile sinisterly to yourself that you are not the only thing in this world that's broken now. DO NOT think about how easy it was to open something and how difficult it felt to open her up. Don't think about how you'd do everything you could to put the shell back together.

Step 6: Whisk

Stare at the yellow. Dwell on how it is one of her favorite colors. Think about the months that she was your sunshine. Stir the yellow until it has no edges, until everything becomes one texture. It reminds you of how you two used to fit together without trying. How no matter what you do, you don't feel whole again. Ignore your wrist hurting. It's better to feel pain than nothing at all.

Step 7: Heat the skillet

Medium-low. She taught you that. She taught you a lot of things, for better or for worse. "It takes time" she used to say, and now you realize she was talking about her emotions and not just breakfast. You're able to read between her lines now and hate yourself for not doing so sooner.

Step 8: Add butter

Watch it melt immediately, softly and quietly, like your heart when you see her name pop up on your phone screen, like the ice cream on your fingers when you met her, like whatever guard you had up the day she saw something in you. Watch it disappear and think about the ways she slowly left---the miles, her responsiveness, weeks without saying your name. No fanfare. Just gone for good.

Step 9: Pour the eggs in

Watch them spread out, quickly filling the borders of the skillet, the way she still fills your thoughts and used to fill your days. Now wait. You're good at that. Waiting too long. Waiting for the perfect moment that never comes. It sinks in that timing is bullshit.

Step 10: Stir gently

Use your wooden spoon to pull the edges in. Notice how soft they are and think of how rough her edges were. Fold the edges gently, don't scramble yet. Be careful with the consistency, the way you had to be with her heart. Let the eggs curl into their softer, dry spots. Think about the nights she used to curl into you.

Step 11: Sprinkle salt

Your hands shake. All this thinking of her and you realize you're crying into the skillet. But salt is salt.

Step 12: Take the eggs off the heat

Quicker than you think you should. Just like how you should have acted with her. The eggs will keep cooking. Everything moves with insistence, even if you no longer touch it.

Step 13: Eat

Do it standing up. Don't bother sitting where she used to. It feels like betraying her. Like going down the same roads you used to with her. Like ordering a banana milkshake. Don't bother. The eggs are warm, nothing more. Not flavorful. Not sustaining. Warmth without her feels meaningless, but you eat anyway. Missing her hasn't killed you yet, it's a slow process, and apparently that means you're supposed to carry on.

Wash the plate and leave it on the counter.

Tomorrow will be more of the same.