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I hear the car drive Jellie away from here. I peek between the curtains and see taillights at the end of the street. Gone. I sit down and try to do the breathing exercises they taught me. I can’t do it. I’m just hyperventilating. They warned us about that too. I need to call my guy. He says any time. I stand up and find my phone in the kitchen, I remember I’m hungry. I’ve been hungry since I opened the door and found Jellie sitting on my couch. I’m still hungry.

I open the fridge. It’s still kind of lunch time and I usually don’t as they say cook at lunch. But I’m so angry I pull the carrots from the bottom drawer. I had intended to make myself a carrot salad. Mayo, raisins, pineapple. No one who’d been shooting up next to me would believe this. I laugh, out loud.

But instead of the salad, I wash the carrots for a really long time. I get the peeler and scrape them clean, one after another. I go back a second time. They are clean, nude. I stop before I have nothing left of my carrots. I start to chop them. Take off the tops. Take off the pointy little bottoms. Slice down the middle, balancing the roundness so I don’t cut myself. Cut again down the middle so I’ve got quarters. I cut the whole long carrots in half, thinking that should have come first. So I do that on the second, third, fourth and fifth carrots. And then I start to chop in small pieces, moving in 1/4 inches. Chop chop chop chop. I tackle another stack of what had been carrots. I’m going fast now. I’m chopping and chopping, then moving to the next pile. And flying down the orange stalks, going faster and faster. And then I slip.

I jump away, drop the knife and press the two side of the slice of my bleeding finger. I can’t look. I have never been able to stand the sight of blood. I press and don’t look. I stand there and press. Very very carefully I turn the faucet on. Just a dribble. I let the water run over my bleeding finger. I let it run and run and run. I’m not sure I got bandaids. Of all the things I now have in my life, I’m not sure I got more than Tylenol. I’m not that far along, far away from who I was. I stand there and close my eyes. When I look back down at my hand hovering over the sink, I see blood is still dripping. Just a little. Somehow I know to press on the wound. I press on my wound and wait for the blood to stop. Now I really need to call my guy.