Bin Day
I tear off a bin liner and begin in the kitchen. Spices we never used; asafoetida, saffron and zatar are trash. Saucers, sauce-boats and saucy fridge magnets. From the dresser; your late mother’s silver cruets are recyclable into solar panels.

From the bathroom; lubricant jelly and last Christmas’s antidepressants. From the bedroom; yoga mats and the Working Couple's Karma Sutra.

I feel facial winkles flatten out. From the living-room, the family photos, books of haiku and scatter cushions are excess.

Stepping into the bin liner is a liberation, a delicious weariness. I knot off from the inside and re-read your note.

‘Tuesday. Bin Day. Remember!’

Your notes are a sales pitch for euthanasia. The light inside the bin liner is black, the air, womby. I feel like an eggshell, broken, but with some inner purpose. The calcium in me is good fertiliser. I can be puréed and added to toothpaste.

A Brief History of Time in our House
This second is the same as the last, a press of the screen, the same exhalation.We lie in bed having social intercourse. Our hearts have pumped four ounces of blood.
 
Minutes replicate themselves like bacteria. Your quantum of likes leave you unloved. We have breathed sixteen litres of air. Little is different in this hour. Our livers have metabolised another drink, the sky sticks on black with white moon. Lunar and menstrual cycles are looping. With variant ingredients we cook the same suppers. Together we have shed a complete layer of skin.
 
We took an excursion around the sun again this year, five hundred million miles back to where we started. The Earth is a fraction warmer although it doesn’t feel it here. Expended another 1.25% of our lives, give or take.
 
On the event horizon of a black hole, time is white. Our white blood cells die every day.

How would you rate your overall experience on a scale of 1 to 5?
She found scoring questionnaires difficult and everything nowadays requested a score. The butchers, the library, even her last smear test, 5 for the young doctor and biscuits. Now the dating website wanted her to rate last night.

He'd arrived before she did 5, bearded 1, and the meal was nice, although there could have been more of it 4. She’d have appreciated less talk of the ex-wife 2. He'd paid 5, and she couldn’t remember the last time a man had put a hand up her skirt in a pub carpark 4. Sex on her kitchen worktops had been a refreshing change 4, although the earth hadn’t moved 2, but then it never did for her, so perhaps 3. She’d never liked sharing her bed 1, but he had left the toilet spotless 4 and went early 5. Average 3. Average was normal.

Death Rattle

He’d begun to defragment sounds so he could distinguish each single click of friction. His razor over morning stubble; if he could decelerate so that each hair was ticked off like the stubby little pins in a music box. The butter knife over toast; if he could smear each crumb one at a time. The metal drum on his cigarette lighter; how deliberately could he thumb it and still get a spark? He took the milk bottle from the fridge without a scrape. Could he insert the spoon in the sugar without the phlegm of a spade in shingle? Stir his tea without clinking the side of the mug? He could hear the scrub of her toothbrush and the static of her hairbrush. Her shuffling walk. He winced, his teeth on edge.