Adrift

The wind reminds me that change is coming. The moon whispers goodbye and the clamor of the street hates me tonight, but I refuse to cry. I spoke many words today, each one was a lie. When I tried to tell the truth, she began to cry. I couldn’t stand her pain, knowing it was my only gift to her. And all I could think about was the way she smiled at the other man today. The way she laughed, and touched her hair, and made excuses to reach out and touch him. She knew I was watching. She was testing me. But she didn’t expect this, now, here, with the windows open and the cacophony of the devout dancing in the streets below us and blowing their ridiculous pipes and horns and shouting “Morya” with more rage and anger than devotion. I wonder if they realize that their god cannot hear them tonight. Tonight is when he’s turned away. That was unworthy of me. This day was unworthy of me. Rather I am unworthy of this day, and all the ones that came before this.

“You don’t love me?” she whispers, standing under the windchime and the flicker of the lights from across the street spying on us from between the swaying fronds of the palm trees.

“I never did.”

“Yes you did. You said so.”

“A man will say anything to get what he wants.”

“And did you get what you wanted?”

“No. I got disappointment, and this night. That’s what I got.”

“Why are you saying these things to me?” She shouts this, not because she’s angry at me. But because she knows I’m angry at her, and I have reason. She wants another. I hate for that. But I hate her more for wanting me to be angry at her for it. I refuse. He can have her.

I turn away to make some tea. She follows me into the kitchen. I say nothing, she says less. Just stands there under the disgusting white light in my kitchen wall, the one that makes me look like a ghoul in the reflections, but somehow she still looks like an angel. That, I hate her for, deeply.

She stands there, looking like an angel cast down from heaven, with my heart at her feet which she’s trying to put together again and she starts to cry. They say there’s nothing that can withstand the force of a woman’s tears. I want to disagree, and I try, but I can’t. Neither can I give in. I rip open the tea bags and stir the leaves into a gentle vortex. She sobs, I stir, she sniffs, I stir, she stifles, and I keep stirring. She stops.

When I turn around she is no longer the weeping angel. When I turn around she is smiling. And that is what finally lances through my pain, and my hurt, and my insecurities, right into my bleeding heart. It’s how she trapped me that first time. But her first smile was an invitation. This one is for malice. This is the smile that says she’s leaving me.

I’m left standing in my kitchen, under the white light besieged by moths, and two cups of tea in my hands. She doesn’t bother to shut the door behind her.