Do the crickets ever sing to you

When the moon drifts so close

The eye of early autumn

A hand come to steady the sky

While you walk along the road

The trees will whisper of the beasts beneath

The coyotes howl while they prey

The owls quietly search for mice

In the shifting underbrush

The wind will bequeath upon you

A mantle of echoes and halves

Filling you with the Earth's breath

While your feet yearn to carry you

Deep into the woods

The leaves will twirl down

In a colorful cascade

Ornamenting nature's fragrant revelry

While the Hunter's moon yellows

And fills the evening sky

The wild becomes so full of life

At the taste of winter's tread

(This is a fictional work, and I apologize in advance for my portrayal of doctors)

Half a century is how long it took me to realize the most important lesson of my life. Half a century of being married to her, and only now do I know.

A year ago—even a month ago—she looked the same as ever, smiling at me and swatting my shoulder teasingly. Her deep brown eyes always glinted with the same clever curiosity, her breath smelling of sharp mints and dark coffee as she talked about her yoga class. She always bragged to me about how the doctor said she had the bones of a twenty-year-old, while I had to get a titanium hip when I was forty.

A year and some months ago I was at the table, reading the newspaper, when I heard a wet, grating sound. I listened for a moment, then stood, certain I'd find the dog puking again. In short order, I found the dog, fit as a middle-aged fiddle, sitting in the hallway staring at the bathroom door. As I looked at the motionless dog, the retching continued. Hands shaking, I opened the bathroom door to find her, my wife, hunched over the toilet.

"Probably that restaurant we went to last night," she joked, "I knew that sushi was bad." She flushed the toilet, and I poured her some water.

I knew she didn't eat the sushi, but I let it go.

The next day, she threw up twice.

The day after, three times.

Then four.

Then five.

I begged her to let me take her to the doctor. After puking six times in a day, she finally caved. When we got there, they charged us one-hundred fifteen dollars and said to get some over-the-counter anti-nausea pills. Jerk.

We got some pills and went home. She took them and went to bed. I sat in my chair and browsed the internet for hours, looking at symptom after symptom for various diseases. At two in the morning, I knew I wouldn't find the answer in medical journals or web forums, so I gave up. We'd have to wait and see what happened.

One and a half hours later, she was puking again. When she looked up at me from the toilet, her eyes widened. "Oh, honey, what are you doing up already? You don't have school today. Did you forget?" My mouth hung slightly open as I stared at her. "Come on, let's get you back to bed, child." I walked up the stairs back to the bedroom with her, wordless.

Six hours later, she got up and made coffee as usual, handed me the newspaper after she finished the crossword, and smiled at the clear sky outside. She went to her yoga class and I weeded the garden. That evening, I came back from walking the dog to find her gone. The car was in the driveway, all her shoes were by the door, her phone and purse were in the kitchen, but she wasn't there.

I waited thirty minutes—nothing.

I went door-to-door asking everyone on the street if they'd seen her—nothing.

I called my son in case he'd seen her—nothing.

Finally, I called the police. They sent an officer to my house and told me not to worry. In the middle of the night, as I walked through my whole house for over the thousandth time, the officer informed me that they'd found my wife. Hands clutched to my chest, I asked them if she was alright. They told me she was fine, just disoriented. Disoriented didn't cover it.

Since she hadn't divulged any plans or taken anything like the car or her phone, finding her would have been exceedingly difficult. Difficult, that is, if not for a call they'd received a little past midnight. The nearby airport had called with concerns about a barefoot woman in her eighties who insisted she had a ticket for the the two am flight to Reykjavik, Iceland. When told that not only was there no such flight scheduled, but she had no ticket or identification, she'd begun yelling. She even threw one of those cheap plastic airport pens at the employee talking to her.

The police officers calmed her down and brought her home, and she went to bed. When she woke up, she was her usual self again, though still frequently vomiting. I took her to the doctor again.

"It's probably dementia," said the white-coated prick.

"'Probably?' You can't be serious. She's in pain. She's been throwing up almost constantly. She walked to the airport barefoot, for God's sake. Can't you help any more than that?"

"I can. I'll prescribe some medicine that can lessen the symptoms. Keep her comfortable, make sure she's monitored. Maybe put a tracker in a piece of clothing she always wears. There are many things you can do."

"That's not what I meant."

"All you can do is your best. If there are any more issues, don't hesitate to contact me."

They charged thirty dollars more than last time, saying it was for the specialist.

A few days later, she disappeared again. The clever woman found every single tracker I'd planted and she'd placed them throughout the neighborhood—I found one the knot of a tree down the street. The police found her at the daycare center, asking after her two-year-old son, who was actually fifty-three.

I gave her the prescribed medicine every night, but after weeks, there wasn't a difference.

"I'm sorry," she told me, "I know I'm stressing you out. I'm sorry I'm like this."

Looking into her gentle, dark eyes, I softly held her hands. "Don't be sorry. You're ill, it's not your fault. I want you to know I love you, alright?"

"Alright."

The last time they found her, she was on a canoe in the middle of a lake. Winds were blowing hard late that spring. Her bony figure bobbed around on the swaying boat as she called for her father, who'd been dead now for twenty-eight years. A bystander tried to take her motorboat out while another called emergency services. Just as the woman in the motorboat was halfway, my wife fell into the cold water.

The woman who'd bravely set out to save my wife was only able to recover a lifeless body as emergency services arrived.

Of course I cried.

My son organized the funeral while I sat staring at the empty chair across the dining table. When he came to check on me in the evening, he found in the dark, staring at the chair. My dog whined at him, begging him to fill her empty bowl. He came every day until the funeral to feed the dog and make me eat and drink.

When the day came, person after person offered me condolences. I don't know who most of them were, and I didn't care to ask. I just looked at the grass as her coffin sat open to the sky, flowers in her cold hands.

I sat by her grave all day, wondering when she'd walk up the hill and laugh at how sorely I fell for her prank, how I was the only one to believe she'd died. I waited for her to come and tell me it was over, so I could walk home with her, holding her hand and making her smile with my jokes. I waited for her.

The figure that came trudging up towards me was only my son with a canvas bag slung over his shoulder. "Hey Dad," he said, and tried his hardest to smile. "I brought you a sandwich." From the bag he pulled a paper-wrapped lump and held it out to me.

My hands stayed motionless.

"Dad, please eat." He held the sandwich further towards me, insistent.

"It doesn't matter anymore, does it?"

"What doesn't?"

"If I live or die. No matter where I go, she won't be there."

"It does matter—it matters to me. I still need you."

I shook my head. "Even if you do, so did she, and look how that turned out."

He sighed, looking skyward. "Dad. I just need you to be here." He dropped his gaze back to me, eyes red and glossy. "You lost your wife, I lost my mom. Don't make me lose you too. We all die eventually; you gotta wait your turn, okay?"

I pondered his words for a moment, then accepted the sandwich. "I'm sorry. I won't do that to you." Gently raising my hand, I gestured him toward me. For the first time in years, I embraced him. I felt his tears soak into my shirt, and I closed my eyes and held him as long as he needed me to.

Half a century. That's how long it took me to realize just how much I needed my wife. That's how long it took me to realize that I can't always follow her when she has her own path. And now, on the anniversary of her death, I sit with my son and treasure the time I still have with him. For hours, we tell stories of the amazing woman we had the good fortune of loving and the deep pain of losing.

When I got kicked out of high school, I just didn't know what to do with myself. How could I have expected a measly prank to go so wrong? All I did was fill the principle's car with my true love: apple juice. My only skills were basic coding and disaster-prevention. As I wandered down the lonely street, it dawned on me: perhaps I could go into cider-security?

Between the myriad of advertisements

The radio doesn't rhyme

It celebrates, laments, describes,

But not every word is

So clearly designed

To fit together perfectly;

Not every tone aligned

The road blurs

Beneath the car

Like a spinning record

Around around around

Each time a different spot pinned down

By the revolving wheels

Each time a different ground

Wander far over

Unending planes of grey

Scarred by cracks and tar

The crimson-tainted orange hues

Of the receding sun

Piercing through the horizon;

Can’t see where you are

Sickeningly sweet fumes

Drifting like fog

Along the crowded lanes

Filling your lungs

Taking your breath away

Until a rising breeze quiets the dooms

Of idling too long

As the darkness rolls out from

Beyond the distant hills

From between the solemn trees

That stand witness along the red-lit road

The soft-edged neon spots that

Speckle the way for miles blur

And from the from the woods'

Long grass resounds

Cricket trills

Gas station

After gas station

Each more vacant than the last,

Their signs a glowing hand held up

Indifferently over the blackening sky

Not in greeting, but notification

Of fuel pumps and coffee

To whoever is passing by

A meter on your dashboard blinks

You look at the time

1:02 AM

Glowing white numbers

Searing into your aching eyes

You blink

And blink again

Sometime, long ago, you thought

About stopping for the night

About taking a break

But the wheels keep rolling

And you keep going

Along the endless freeway

Into the dark

All around her, the world dimmed. The ubiquitous darkness seemed as though she were gazing into the vast pupil of the universe. Like a mite of dust, she floated and trembled before it.

She knew it couldn't be real.

How could it?

How could the world become so cold, so dark, in just an instant? Everything seemed to float around her, twirling weightlessly, so that every time she shifted and felt the ground beneath her, a strange vertigo reared up. She shivered at the way the wind hushed and stilled to look at the huge spot, the pupil, that peered out at the Earth. It was all so strange and lovely. When she blinked, the universe's fiery iris created a purple ring on her inner eyelid. Strange and lovely.

Once in a lifetime, this phenomenon occurs. Yet that didn't seem true. It was a lifetime, eternity stretched over a fistful of moments, moments running through her grip like water. An eternity was held in that great eye; an eternity in knowing that even forever must end. The flame haloed pupil gently reminded her that even the sun will change and disappear; long after she has escaped the gaze of the universe's pensive eye; long after the light of the sky is no longer obscured by this beautiful blot.