Slowing
There is a vague forced urgency to her supposed hesitations, those of hands to hair and the cigarette endlessly poised on her lips but always unlit.
"You're pissed off," I half ask half tell her, but there's nothing there to be said in return. "What is it?"
But it's always nothing with you, I think to myself. The sky and the birds and the truth you'll never tell.
We are sitting in my kitchen and it's later than it really should be, given the nature of the actions we need to take. I'm being unspecific because I'm simply trying to relay to you my problem. The other details are insignificant. I'm vague, I know.
I have told her lies that I regret, re-imagined transgressions that I've long since forgotten. I don't know what I've said and what I haven't.
And my answers are bluffs, to these questions she asks and the movements we make.
Our lives move in fragments, always. We only glimpse the loose parts we leave behind. And neither of us have spoken in a while. I'm eyeing my scotch and the smoke from her cigarette hangs like blue just above and just below.
My lip is pierced and the shadows under my eyes hang like gallows. I am drinking too much and I'm fully aware of the situation. My spit tastes of blood and I hear her stand, the squeak of her chair on our cheap flooring. My burnt food in the bin, the plate unwashed.
She stands at the sink and fills her glass and chews her lip and there's a drawing on our fridge—yellowing lined paper, A4, and weak watercolours that remind us both of home—that she did for me. If this was a film, the gentle patter of raindrops would brush our window.
There's a silence between us and a contemplation, or at least that is what I would believe it to be.
"There's somebody else," she says, and I don't know whether she's talking about me or her.