As I stared down at the mess I had made, it occurred to me just how much brains resembled overcooked pasta. Not something I ever thought I would have firsthand knowledge of but the white, sludgy mess that spilled from the overturned cooking pot was near identical to the white, sludgy mess that spilled from my wife’s head.

Comparably, it was actually easier to tell apart the blood and the marinara pasta sauce that mixed together in different shades of red. Red that splattered across the white tile floor and the white kitchen cabinets and the white shirt I wore and her white skin that was becoming whiter by the second. Red that was running slowly down the grout towards my feet.

I stepped back instinctively and then stopped when I realised my socks where already soaked through.

From the open balcony a cool breeze washed over me, pulling at my hair and cooling my flushed skin. It was crazy to think that mere minutes ago the apartment was alive with the sound of us cooking and then fighting and then fighting and then…

I knelt next her. I knelt and I scooped up what I could with my hands and shovelled it into the pot. The pasta felt awful between my fingers; warm and wet. It was homemade, not that cheap store-bought stuff, so it cooked fast. We had missed the window in which the pasta was to be removed and it had all but liquefied in its pot. Broken eggshells still sat in a pile on the marble counter-top. As if it had happened years ago, I recalled myself cracking those eggs against the edge of a mixing bowl, adding the yolk to flour mix as she stirred.

My fingers found something in the sauce, dragging me from my memories, and pulled it free. It was her phone. The phone that had started it all. The screen was broken from where it had fallen against the tiles. I turned it over in my hand, over and over, my resentment of it building until I stood and turned and hurled it as hard as I could. It sailed out the window and fell to the street below.

That damned phone. She had been standing with her back to me when the text came in, and I looked over at it. Not in a weird way, not snooping. Just wanting to let her know who had messaged. And I saw it was Tony. Despite all her assurances that she had stopped talking to him, it was Tony. Normally I wouldn’t go through her phone because I’m not that kind of guy, but it was Tony, so of course I checked the message he had sent to her, and I read the messages she had sent to him. And of course, I was mad as I feel I had the right to be, and of course she was mad which I feel was unfair. And of course, it had led to a fight.

She had tried to take it from me but only succeeded in knocking it from my hands. She went to leave after that. I still had more to say, but she didn’t want to hear it. She went to leave so I grabbed her, to stop her, and she hit me, hard. I pulled at her then. I pulled her back to the kitchen where she struggled to get free, pushing at me with one hand and frantically grabbing at whatever she could with the other. She had knocked the pots containing the pasta and sauce from their places on the stove-top, scalding our feet as they splashed against the ground. She slipped then, cracking her head against the sharp edge of the kitchen counter.

And that was it.

She died so quickly that it was both frightening and maddening – frightening in how fragile a human life seemed to be and maddening in how this woman who could spend hours fighting with me over the most insignificant things had only managed to fight for her for a few seconds.

I looked down at my sauce-stained hands. They were no longer trembling. I worked them underneath her body and lifted her up. She was heavy. Dead weight. I walked out onto the balcony, struggling, and I lifted her over and let her fall.

I didn’t wait to see her body break against the street below. Instead, I went back inside and began hunting through the cupboard for a mop.