It's like eating too many slices of pineapple. The way it feels just like acid burn, your tongue heavy and painful.
Guess it might as well be another reason to dislike the fruit, right?
it happens in slow motion. goading words, cut through with pain, hoarse with rage. a split second decision, a fist closed on itself until it blossoms around the sharp plastic.
a shatter you expect, no matter how long it's been.
the only thought running through my head is, You know what? I’m amazed that I’ve never thought of this, but he only breaks her stuff. I can’t think of one thing he’s smashed that belonged to him.” Next, I asked her who cleans up the mess. I answered that I do.
so i grab the broom. i might as well right, i've already got the swiffer in hand. awfully tongue in cheek, i realize, as i'm writing this down. i clean up their messes. shards of this stupid pineapple my mother keeps around, mixed with our hair and the candies we left inside. i think, the way he devalues women's possessions. until that same hoarse voice cuts through again.
my only mistake was giving birth to you. and that's enough for me to stop considering the sociological implications of domestic violence in households because i suddenly remember they're people. only people.
I can't help but rationalize it as my fault. At least, if it was, then it would explain the balancing act. I'm on the grandstand, Listening to the case before me, weighing my judgement on the issue like I have an obligation to figure it out. It's not my fault though, that's the one thing it isn't, in this mess of a page.
They say as much all the time. It helps when you're here. We would fight even if you weren't here. You make it better by explaining.
I'm starting to think I'm just a lousy excuse that makes them feel better when they need one.
I wish I could make sense. I know I'm not right now. It's absurd when you really sit down and think about it, that's all. It's just one piece of ...cutlery? Out of a few more shattered throughout a decade or so. It's nothing, really, when you think about it.
It's the rock and the hard place, it's the jagged cliffs or the uncaring sea, it's the difference between tying a noose or slitting your wrists; either way is slow and painful and stupid. So unbearably stupid.
On nights like these, I'm pretty sure I can't be a man because I don't get angry. I'm equally sure I'm not a woman because I don't get angry. Instead, I just stand in between two wounded animals, snarling that the other bit them first.
At least he didn't actually hit her. At least she actually conceded at the end. And I'm just the air inbetween, until I'm god, deciding who's vindicated in heaven and who's destined for hell.
The kicker is that either of them expects me to abandon the other, like we're about to make way to Noah's Ark, leaving the rest of our kind behind. There will be no future roommates, there will be no abandoning this rock as the rains drown us.
It's either I get out, or I die with the both of them. I'm not god, I'm the absence of it.