When the sun came out I took off five layers. I felt naked and free, ready to show him the foot. It had changed again, like a mood ring, a naked foot right there in the middle of the living room. He’d just returned from his jog, twenty miles, and there was my foot. The room got still. My husband, the violinist, skinny and quick, a ferret. The room hot and sad, the sofa we’d picked because it was so cozy we just fit.

I kissed the top of his head. “Ouch!” he said. He used to have stacks of hair. I’m sorry about how things turned out, I said, but he knew this already. He was sorry too. Of course. He scooted away and looked out the window. His bald head was a magnet for beauty. There was a new woman on the block, with a Stradivarius body, the kind he had always wanted to play.

Bio: Meg Pokrass