I can’t go away. The girls all come out from the shops, and the streets get empty and still. But at the end of the block once in a while somebody crosses and goes out from sight.
I watch them. I begin counting, “One, two, three—”
Underneath my mind is saying, “Maybe it’s him. Maybe the next one!”
My eyes shut themselves. I feel the end from everything.
“Ah, David! David! Gott! Mein Gott!”
I fall on the steps and clinch the stones with the twistings of my body. A terrible cry breaks out from me—“David! David!” My soul is tearing itself out from my body. It is gone.
Next day I got news—David opened a doctor’s office uptown.
Nothing could hurt me no more. I didn’t hope for nothing. Even if he wanted me back, I couldn’t go to him no more. I was like something dying what wants to be left alone in darkness.
But still something inside of me wanted to see for itself how all is dead between us, and I write him:
“David Novak: You killed me. You killed my love. Why did you leave me yet living? Why must I yet drag on the deadness from me?”