Month: January 2020

The sun shone through the window on the one red blot on the floor. The red spot where her heel now turned as though stamping out the cigarette she held in her hand. Its thin wisps of smoke trailed through the light up to the ceiling.

 She’d come in hot. Angry about something I’d written, saying it was about her even though I had no idea what it was about; suffering, I think, I’d thought at the time. 

Besides that, it wasn’t well written, so what did it matter? It would never see the light of day. It didn’t matter to her, because she’d seen it the one way, so no other way would it be.

I struggled for breath. I was anxious about my work under the best of circumstances, so I cowered in the face of her fury. I’d seen few others do the same and even fewer stand up to her. Either way, they ended up in puddles beneath her fiery green eyes.

I wasn’t others. I cared. I bled when I put words down, and I bled now where her nails had caught when she’d slapped my face, causing the blot on the floor. I was determined not to crumble.

I’d tried to tell her it was over between us and the words on the page didn’t matter, whether they were about her or not. That was after the slap. 

She’d stood smoking, looking around the room. It was as though she was searching for some implement to impart further pain. She couldn’t hurt me any more. I already felt the words were garbage, and I had born the brunt of her physical rage.

In that moment I felt sad as I saw the anger throbbing in her forehead, and knew she had nowhere to release it. She too began to understand she couldn’t hurt me; that no pain would come from me to satisfy her hunger. Her eyes softened as she tossed the cigarette on the red blot on my floor and dug her heel into it.

“It was shit anyway,” she muttered as she walked out the door.