Absent

“I’ve done everything I can,” he began to exclaim, “what else do you want?” Tears ran down his cheeks as she stood on the other side of the kitchen unmoved. She displayed disbelief, and the absence of empathy caused him to burst in rage. “How can you not say anything? You just want to stand there and torture me?” His words carried agonizing pain; a bitterness was stuck to the roof of her mouth. In twenty-six years, this was her first time witnessing a man completely exposing himself. He refused to live in fear of the repercussions of releasing his emotions that lacked sustenance.

She wished to speak, but the words dancing on the tip of her tongue triggered waves of nausea. Countless people have walked out of her life, but the difference between him and the others is that not once in the past had she ever been repulsed. She was hollow; a vessel incapable of embracing the deceit he found simplistic. During his rampage, she took some time to glance around the house. Frames rested upon the yellow walls appearing like unfinished puzzles with the missing pieces of shattered glass scattered across the floor. The lamp whose bulb hasn’t stopped flickering since last fucking week strobed. The blinds were closed since vitamin c’s for suckers. Dishes were piling inside of the sink, a slew of empty boxes thrown around, and she could smell her sour scent wafting from her pajamas she had worn for the last several days.

His voice thundered throughout the first floor and her curiosity peaked wondering if any other ears were listening to the same insecurities he attempted to hide with blame. “Don’t you understand what I’ve been through this last week,” he asked, “or the feelings that I’ve been dealing with?” She denied his fictitious despair to course through her veins. “Are you even here right now?” No. She was not. “What the hell is wrong with you?” Her heart maintained the rhythm of midnight cicadas. A fist met the island that rested before her. “Do you want this to end?” He held his hand to hide the swelling. His consciousness believed that he was helping her return to reality, but until he took his final steps out of the house, her soul remained unchaperoned.

Leaning against the counter finally caused her to feel something: numbness. Once the tingling vanished from her thigh, she floated to the couch to light a cigarette and stare at the blank screen of the TV. The drifting smoke allowed for her to indulge in fantasy. Sneaking through the crack of the window, the smoke dissipates without a trace. An unknowingly inescapable fate roughly stolen by the wind. “Look,” he eventually spoke collected, “I know this probably won’t make a difference, but I at least want to tell you what happened.” He meandered to the coffee table sitting at her feet, sat down, and rested his forearms on his knees. As he began to plead his case, his voice was replaced by the hum of a fly slamming into every possible wall in hopes that one will fall to shambles so it could flee. The strobe from the lamp restructured her breathing. “It was never my intention for you to find out,” he interrupted, “and it surely wasn’t my intention for you to get hurt.”

The cigarette gave her ground to stand on as the ember caressed her knuckles. She realized there was not a single drag she took. Her hand released the filter and met her foot once it hit the floor to leave a memory burnt into the fibers. He stopped rambling and raced to the kitchen table to grab the ash tray he had made for her during their senior year of high school. Flakes of purple paint peeling from the surface displayed its age and glimmered as it was placed under the lamp. He displayed his final form of decency by removing the cancerous carcass from the carpet. “Trust me,” he began softly after a small lapse of silence, “I understand what you’re feeling. I mean, I don’t, but I can try.” He reached his hands out to meet hers as they remained loose in her lap. His grip, desperate in all measure, held on tightly. “What I did, you and I both know it can’t be taken back,” a miserable attempt of poetic justice, “but what can be controlled is how we move on from here.” He was whispering sweet nothings to a corpse.

She removed her hands to light another Marlboro. His impatience was relentless. She was diseased. Her cigarette glazed the room, attempting to replace an idling plague. Her deep breath was misunderstood communication, and her eyes were captured by the scenery barely visible through the blinds. He was restless and paced the room, which forced the standing smoke to dance onward. Her peripheral showcased panic, but her focus was no longer pertinent to unbalanced emotions. With every step he made, he began to dare himself to lash out to invoke a response. He turned to scream, “She loves me, you know!” She discovered the willpower to look in his direction. Not at his feet like he currently was, but into his desolate brown eyes. Her gaze refused to change direction, and as he finally received what he desired, the fly became trapped between the screen and the windowpane.

The silence ate him alive, and he began to fidget as he refused to acknowledge her attention. He whispered, “You’re meaning to tell me that you’re willing to throw away ten years of a life we built together over one meaningless mistake?” He was correct. There was one mistake, but simply because that is the only one he wished to acknowledge. Years of deception, countless arguments, dozens of suitcases packed, and hotel rooms booked all ignored for the unconditional love she forced herself to carry. His secretary was the harlot who broke the camel’s back. “If I could take it back, I would,” he spoke as he dared to sit before her once more, “I really would. I’m sorry, okay? I don’t know what else you want me to say aside from that.” She stared throughout his essence searching for the man she fell in love with. The boy who carried her books for her from class to class or the young man whose fifth anniversary gift was a cute brick home that they had eyeballed for weeks. The caring nature, the intimacy, and the constantly laughing and joke cracking slowly transitioned to the spineless heathen he now lives as. Nonetheless, he made his decision for the both of them.

She stood from the sofa looking down upon him as he rested in the hole he just finished digging. She attempted to give him another opportunity to state his case, but his eyes refused to look towards anything other than the scuffs on his overly worn Oxfords. She began ascending to the second floor and there were pictures of the two of them resting neatly on the wall. One by one she began pulling them off and throwing them elegantly across the first floor. A photograph from their wedding day landed directly before his feet. Stepping onto the top of the stairs was monumental for her as the weight of the atmosphere vanished and the unbearable pressure instantly lifted from her chest. She stared at several suitcases placed before their bedroom door, and much like the photographs, they too began to take flight. He began to scream at her once more, “Are you kidding me? This is childish!” The final thud of the last bag was the vaccine she craved. “You’re throwing away years of a relationship! YEARS!” 

She finally spoke, “I saved you some more time and packed your bags for you.”