Before the day began, and before she went to sleep, the young girl would lay in her bed and imagine her dream lover. There were no more boys in the town. They were all at war. It was now a town full of women and she didn’t yearn for the women like she did for the men. She yearned for the boys and men because they were all gone. You couldn’t yearn for something right in front of you.
She imagined her dream lover slowly in her mind. Each day of the war, the image became fuzzier, softer. She was getting older, budding breasts, outgrowing her childhood clothes, and slowly forgetting what men looked like. During the day, she would listen to the older women in the town tell stories about their husbands and their sons. She would beg them to tell her the same stories over and over again, desperate for details. What did he sound like? Like a bear, but also like a sleepy bird. What did he smell like? Like eggs but also like pine needles.
Ever since the war began, and the boys and men left, the women had figured out a very civil equilibrium. This wasn’t a surprise to anyone. Everyone felt safer, looser, stronger. Women became lovers with each other, and some women started walking around the town naked. Of course, there was still gossip and jealousy and competition, but a different kind of stability and fun bubbled up in the absence of the boys and men. Beauty for beauty's sake was not considered frivolous or vain. Ribbons in braids were recognized as holy. The young girl was listened to and taken seriously and told she was beautiful but also that she was very smart.
Before the war, her father had been the town butcher. Her mother and older sister had taken on the family business and no matter how many baths they took, each smelled like old blood and feathers and flesh and cartilage and bones. The girl wanted nothing to do with butchering. Now that the women did everything and she couldn’t remember what a man looked like or what a man even was, she fantasized about the time when women baked bread and gardened and raised the children. Every few months, a letter from one of the husbands or brothers or sons would arrive and the women and girls would gather together and read it all aloud over a town banquet. Some of the letters were horrifyingly graphic, with descriptions of carnage and death. Some of the letters were utterly sexual with their own yearning. As time passed, and the letters arrived less frequently, it became clear that the boys and men were also forgetting what girls and women were.
The girl became a young woman. Her mother got too old to keep butchering and so the girl assumed the role alongside her older sister. She grew used to the sight of caked blood underneath her fingernails and imagined her father with human blood under his fingernails. She wondered if her father was still alive. No new babies were born since the war so the town was even more efficient and productive.