101 Words

Afterward, you rest your palm on my cheek, in the space between my strawberry birthmark and chin, in the space between your distant wife and my short-tempered husband.

“I won’t leave her,” you say. “My kids…”

“We can’t keep doing this,” I say, throwing off the threadbare cotton sheet.

But we do.

Not all poisons come from toxins. Even vitamins can be poisonous. Or water. That which sustains also destroys, in high enough doses.

So we run away into the gaps, between weekday teleconferences and Sunday’s banana waffles, between sign-ins at day care and the quiet thrum of our paper-doll lives.

“I never loved him,” Mama told me as we headed to the pawn shop in the part of town Daddy told us not to go to.

“Not even on your wedding day?”

“Nope.”

She made me swear not to tell Daddy she was selling her diamond wedding ring. “I’ll just pretend it went down the shower drain.”

I was quiet. I didn’t like to keep secrets, but it felt good when Mama trusted me.

After we left the pawn shop, Mama paid the light bill. With the remaining money, we got ice cream, just us two, just how she liked it.

He already knows it, but this battle will not be mine.

It begins, as it always does, with the eyes. A momentary flicker downwards as I break first contact.

Barely registered but a signal nonetheless.

I slip on beloved red boxing gloves, moulded to me like a first love. I lift both hands to my face as if in prayer. The sweat and blood of younger days fills my nostrils. The cooling touch of worn leather caresses my cheeks. I am ageless. The gears of time grind down.

The electronic buzzer beckons us to arms.

The laying on of hands begins.

They shake their heads beneath umbrellas as our feet are lost to puddles. They watch with pity as confetti turns to pulp.

A wedding in this weather, they remark. So unfortunate.

Unlucky.

They forget.

How we’d met at the bus stop, seven years ago. How fierce rain pelted the cramped shelter. How we’d glimpsed each other over the throng of disgruntled bodies.

It’s the kind of love that old songs favoured. Random, true. As friends swiped, slaved over meticulously-written profiles, polishing their armour in an uncertain battlefield, we’d already made it out.

Today the rain compliments our happy tears.

Perfectly planned.

I await my turn to order, desperately needing coffee. My head feels odd, my memory mashed.

I overslept, rushed out the door with only a quick peck for Dave.

Sunlight stabs my eyes. Impatient, I jab the woman in front of me. “What’s the holdup? It’s just coffee.”

Confused, she turns away without answering.

You’re a bundle of nerves, Dave said.

The light intensifies. A horn sounds. My temples throb.

You need to relax.

Not sunlight.

Headlights.

That deathtrap intersection at 9th and Main.

Slow down a bit.

A chill overtakes me, and I understand.

I’m not in line for coffee.

The morning exactly sixty days later, I opened my front door, freshly painted marigold-orange, a change from classic oak.

There lay on the welcome mat a bouquet of roses. Five crimson roses, twelve spiky leaves.

I sat there, on the floor, just staring. Gingerly, I loosened a branch from its silk-ribbon grasp. A waft of rich fragrance washed over. Small tears slipped out from my eyes.

Behind me, the orange door creaked; Holly, my roommate, peeked out with coffee-stained pants. “Breakfast?” she asked, then took in the roses.

“Five years ago today, right?” she whispered.

I sniffed. “The florist should stop.”