Status: complete
No Other
Hot Sauce
I have known for weeks that you were sailing further away from me.
You have been staying later at work, and going out with your friends every Friday. Each night you come home with a small smile on your peaceful face. You linger at the door and close your eyes, you breathe in deep and hold in the oxygen. When you turn to me your face is a hard mask, every expression is constructed. You touch me mechanically, you touch me infrequently, you kiss me with the closed mouth of a brother. I am trying but I cannot get at you, you are obstructed. Where do you go when you go quiet? What aren’t you telling me?
Today we push our half-empty cart across clinical supermarket tiles for twice as long as we need to – you are distracted and indecisive. Hot sauce or barbecue? You don’t hear me, so I pick the hot sauce to spite you. The little petty things we do for love. I empty our things on to the conveyer-belt but you do not raise a finger to help, you do not smile or engage – you are somewhere else. Sam? I have been calling to you but you refuse to answer.
I count the steps to our car and try to smile at you, to coax you out. I know that your mind is a kind of prison – I have spent eight years bending the bars to let you out, but sometimes you prefer to recede in there. To shrink back in to your darkness for a little while.
I am moving the last bag in to the open boot when you tap me on the shoulder, so I turn. Your face is full of vibrant colour and I go to kiss it; something in your eyes stops me. Your expression is all pity. I have suddenly stepped on to uneven ground, and one foot is unbalanced.
“I … there’s someone else.”
I feel my breath stop in my throat. I feel my fingers lose their grip in my closed fist. I feel my ribcage shake and shudder,
as it is ripped open by your bare hands.
You have been staying later at work, and going out with your friends every Friday. Each night you come home with a small smile on your peaceful face. You linger at the door and close your eyes, you breathe in deep and hold in the oxygen. When you turn to me your face is a hard mask, every expression is constructed. You touch me mechanically, you touch me infrequently, you kiss me with the closed mouth of a brother. I am trying but I cannot get at you, you are obstructed. Where do you go when you go quiet? What aren’t you telling me?
Today we push our half-empty cart across clinical supermarket tiles for twice as long as we need to – you are distracted and indecisive. Hot sauce or barbecue? You don’t hear me, so I pick the hot sauce to spite you. The little petty things we do for love. I empty our things on to the conveyer-belt but you do not raise a finger to help, you do not smile or engage – you are somewhere else. Sam? I have been calling to you but you refuse to answer.
I count the steps to our car and try to smile at you, to coax you out. I know that your mind is a kind of prison – I have spent eight years bending the bars to let you out, but sometimes you prefer to recede in there. To shrink back in to your darkness for a little while.
I am moving the last bag in to the open boot when you tap me on the shoulder, so I turn. Your face is full of vibrant colour and I go to kiss it; something in your eyes stops me. Your expression is all pity. I have suddenly stepped on to uneven ground, and one foot is unbalanced.
“I … there’s someone else.”
I feel my breath stop in my throat. I feel my fingers lose their grip in my closed fist. I feel my ribcage shake and shudder,
as it is ripped open by your bare hands.