Stainless steel cleaves the onion in two. A sulphurous tang rises, stinging eyes, blurring vision. These are the first tears. A facsimile of grief, as though trying on its trappings for size. There is no sadness. No fear. Only a veil of dull distance. The smooth slice of blade through fibrous flesh has never felt so alien, the colours oversaturated, the motion rhythmic and sensual.

It does not look like food, this collection of neatly sliced vegetables arrayed on the cutting board. It’s hard to recall what food tastes like, or why anybody would want to put it into their mouth. Your texts have brought the world down to scale. All of it—dressing and homework, emails and omelette—seems so absurdly pointless. All of it is nothing in the face of waiting. This limbo between question and answer: are you or aren’t you?

I love you said the first text. It was five in the morning, the world a predawn dream. It induced a rush of annoyance at the shattering of sleep.

You’re the strongest person I know said the next. I can’t take it anymore. It’s all too much. A volley of messages, six seven eight bang bang. Then you went quiet.

The allure of sleep still pulled. Surely somebody else could sort out your problems. But if this was a proper ending and not just another instalment in your tragedy then such self-indulgent negligence might induce weeks of sleepless guilt.

And so it’s logistics. An efficiency of phone calls: to your parents, your saint of a girlfriend, your campus security. A ring which goes to your voicemail. A text: Don’t you dare give up. Change is not only possible but inevitable if you commit to it. Some bullshit. Then, duty is fulfilled. Nothing more can be done from this bedroom with you a thousand kilometers away.

Waiting. Released back to routine, but sleep has slipped away and the cheery winter sunlight seems to mock itself.

Sure. Life screws with plans and tosses people into the way when least expected, and there’s grinding pain and a dull sameness and rooms without doors and fingers grown bloody from scraping at the drywall and the looping track of old fears and a clawing anonymity. But there is also the smell of wood smoke and the glow of laughter, the glide of paint across canvas, the soaring freedom of alpine air and singing warblers and a magenta carpet of fireweed rising from the wreckage of a charred forest.

There is still choice. Listen to the birdsong, forget the niggling aches. Reminisce about diving into sparkling summer water from the creosote pier. Do not dwell on the screaming arguments, the trip of a tongue, the creeping doubts. Believe in strength or redemption until neural pathways reform around these ideas. Faith can sustain itself.

But you are your own being. Your thoughts impenetrable even when your words spill like oil on water, breathlessly rapid and spreading in all directions and threatening to suffocate anyone foolish enough to attempt a rescue. Perhaps you are not capable of choosing hope. Perhaps, despite specious attempts, you do not want to. You would be crying right now; you burst into tears at the slightest provocation, seek out the bad things like a tongue returning to a wiggling tooth. Your skin is not a barrier but a raw nerve, alive with the sharpest parts of other people and places. You are still waiting to spot an answer glittering up from some crevasse as though this is an Easter egg hunt.

You lost your driver’s license last month. Devised some scattered story to evoke sympathy, though it hardly matters whether it was excessive speeding or an unraveling of your grip on your own body. Sold the Toyota to the woman who let you sleep on her sofa. This is why children are not allowed to drive. It is difficult to get anywhere without taking control of the wheel.

Eight years old and you laugh, all scraggly arms and bird bones and missing teeth. The raspberry soars high into the air, arcs above the powerline, lands in your waiting mouth and you grin a red smear of triumph. Nine, and you sit in school assembly trembling with fear of being found out for the single M&M hidden beneath your tongue. Someone might hear if you swallow. Ten, and you lash out with fists and desperate words at whoever loves you most in a screaming attempt to release the incomprehensible pain built up over a day’s routine existence.

You have memorized the name and population of every capital city in your World Atlas. Traced the wandering contours of South America until you can draw them with misting breath and finger on the windshield. Hand-illustrated a weekly report on the egg-laying statistics of local chickens, complete with tables and graphs. Leaped, weightless, off the ski jump you built in the yard, again and again as the sun set and the moon rose, pausing only for a headlamp.

Does it help, to break the world down to its composite pieces? Do your calculations lead to understanding? When did your obsessions turn inward, knot into this muddle of self-digestion?

The vegetables go into a Tupperware container for some later, inconceivable date when hunger returns. The eggs, a dozen lives stopped short before they could become, return to the bottom shelf of the fridge. The phone sits on the counter but there is nobody left to call and nothing much to say. The awaited ring, your voice or its absence and a distraught girlfriend, does not come.

Outside, movement stands in for thoughts and the feelings which are not there. The land is frosted white and children slip down snowbanks, padded like penguins, under the benevolent watch of a rosy-cheeked grandmother.

“Hello.”

“Hi there. Beautiful morning, isn’t it?”

“It sure is.”

The million-dollar houses with their fake columns do not manage to conceal the shoddy craftsmanship, joints warping, though they can’t yet be twenty years old. The people here do not walk unless armed with expensive jogging gear and plugged into a timed exercise soundtrack. Sunlight breaks across welcome mats and belated Christmas decorations and nobody else is around to notice. Are they cooking breakfast? Are they happy, behind their colour-coordinated walls?

It is quiet save for the chirp of a robin.