LatinosUSA

She likes to ask the questions that promote suffering and did you sleep with him? You fear her turning on you and tearing you apart yet your sad apple core tells you you deserve it. You aren’t going to lie but you are going to stop answering these questions. One day she is extra hot about it and it happens. She takes your silence for a yes and rushes you and strikes you across the jaw. You lay your bones face down on the bed and start crying. “What the fuck is wrong with you?” She yells, “You’re disgusting!” … followed by all the  why would you how could yous … you claw at your silver dress for a while and scrape off the sequins like it’s your skin. Another trip to the piano bar to douse the flames and fears with pints of red ale with a fine and foamy head. You hate yourself less after she hit you. You hate her more, hating your life together and what it has become, and the world and everything in it… rotating your rotisserie of hurt feelings that the fire might temper you into something stronger.

After midnight all hell is about to break loose … she comes at you and tries to beat on you some more. This time you are determined not to freeze and turn into a jellyfish. You show some spine and duck out and circle the bed. You wrestle her to the ground and hold her there until she stops fighting. She cannot believe that you could be stronger than her. Neither can you. Tempered steel. She is gonna have to dig deep to turn the tables! You hope she does. Go ahead and pound my thinking head into the floorboards until I am senselessly in love with you again. She pushes you off and places an elbow into the softness of your belly. You catch your wind and lay her out again and she is complaining she cannot breathe. You dissociate. You forget who and where and what you are. And hate yourself some more. For needing a man for any reason at all. For holding her feelings against her. You could jump out the window but it’s only the second floor. You could pull an Elliott Smith and stab yourself in the heart – but did he really? You love to feel in control. But you aren’t in control and you know it. She gets free by pressing her palm into your nose and face and tries to gouge your eyes and your head goes back like a whiplash.

It’s madness! How do we get back to the good stuff? Reading passages of our favorite books and singing our favorite songs together. Bombing one another with love poems? No one is safe. It won’t be long. Another eviction, but this time it will not be nice. There will be a note on the door and a court date you pin to a corkboard: Unlawful Detainer.

You get the last newspaper you will ever buy. It’s a common day and a common thing normal people do and you are aching to be normal whatever that is. You seem to be getting along like normal people would? “How about a walk through the park?” She refuses. “Why not?” Your thoughts have extrapolated and interpreted your life out into the future, where she becomes another ex hunting you down to get back at you. The day stretches into evening and then night, and all is calm and harmless like a bully eating the chocolate bar from your paper lunch bag. She hates you for being tempered steel. You don’t hate yourself for a change. You are writing stories on your laptop and she is designing her own website; she offloads her time pipe dreaming … making a living through her laptop instead of just getting a job. You are scared to confront her about reality. You are both hyperfocused wearing headphones, listening to separate streams of music, taking in the blue light to the extent that you are almost unaware of one another’s presence.  It gets later and later and twisted. Someone wants the other one’s attention but cannot get it. Fuck it. Now she wants to go outside and touch earth but you are consumed with the words. Oh fuck – it’s hopeless. You fall asleep spooning a stuffed animal, pretending it’s someone who loves you. You hug all of the air out of it and it never complains and it never abandons you and it never loses it’s mind because it’s mind is made of stuffing … and it’s never going to look at you like that, with those blue button eyes, it’s never going to call you disgusting and it’s never going to hate you and you can rub all it’s fur off with all of your anxiety and sob until it’s soaking wet and it’s never going to change and it’s never going to di