We took apart the car, piece by piece, starting with the smaller ones, and moving on to the larger ones as our muscles grew bigger. Pretty soon we had a yard full of parts, and we grew bored with each other, sipping coffee and pretending.She took careful scissors to the seams of us, until we were separate pieces as well, and had nothing to drive away from the scene, since our car was parts.We erased each other from the calendars in our phones, we smiled brief smiles.
We graduated to a bottle of wine, once the sun had gone down and we were below freezing. With glasses clinking, we froze to the steps, froze in statues, looking at each other, forced to look at each other. Didn't thaw til it got warm the next days, but our hearts were beating slow, so we put the car back together but it took us hours, with intermittent breaks for calls from our bosses, or to renew our books at the library, or checking the mail and such.
It was a larger thing than us, so we sighed a lot.
Communication of sighs to each other for several days until it hurt to keep going that way. Or hurt more than it had, already. She felt a need to sew us back together. Felt a need to say sorry, but only with her eyes, and even the eyes only spoke in Spanish. We linked fingers momentarily, unwilling to admit love or sacrifice. She turned the ignition, I adjusted the rear view mirror but the car didn't start. We had more time to sit and think about what we'd done wrong, and our used books wouldn't sell, and how we had stopped taking pictures a year ago, so we couldn't remember having fun.
You do what you have to.