I found this in the dusty file drawer that is my computer. Every virtual scribble has been set aside for just such an ocassion. Ladies and agents, I give you…The Flame
Her face turns toward his, eyebrows set low as her eyes take on the appearance of a cat and her skin begins to blister with frustration. He moves his face toward the carpet, the redness of his face is beginning to show through the facade of manhood. Had he been two-miliseconds quicker he would have caught her hand as it struck the side of his face, landing mostly on his cheek and upper jaw. It didn’t sting much though the pain of being delt a blow by a woman half his size was enough to make him weep.
She was moving toward and away in rocking motions, arms folded and unfolded. She couldn’t stand still and he couldn’t move. In a few minutes it would all be over, the pain, the moment of transition would come and then recourse for the actions. She would begin to cry and make promises about the flame that sat inside her but they would be false. She would flare-up again and this scene would play itself out once again.
Sometimes it would be just words as thin and straight and pointed as spears of hate thrown by an aboriginal force or the physicality would rear itself toward him and he would again endour another anger-infested retaliation of her hands. Had he known in his youth that this woman, one whose own frail body could once barely carry the child who now was wailing in its room at the sounds of arguing, would bring to the table not a spirit of peace but more a primieval wrath he would have chosen different.
He had no choice now but to move to the floor and follow his tears.
Those single drops of saline on the floor may as well have been blood from his veins and the beating of his heart might reside better when pulled from his chest into her clutched hands. He knew there was never a moment when he wouldn’t fear this flame of frustration, the steps he now would trod were deep into the mud of past transgressions he knew had come back to haunt him.
On a particularly good day his thoughts might stray away for a moment or two but would quickly return and set themselves upon this woman who he once, and still tries to, love. The view looking across the deep shag saw her feet leave the room, the door didn’t slam as it usually did after such a tirade but remained open long enough for him to witness what no person should ever have to endour.
Left in her hands, knuckles white, was only a pool of blood running between her fingers. She grasped at her chest, no, it was something else. The orange handle of dime-store scissors were all that he could see, the rest now touched what he had only hoped to gain through love, her heart.
In a movement as graceful as a sunset she fell, and as such the shirt she wore began to turn a violent crimson deepening in color with each passing second. The life drained from her face as he began to realize what it was she had indeed done. Her mouth turned into a look of fright, now realizing the implement had truly done what she had enacted in her mind hundreds of times. Too late, she thought, no turning back. But she wanted to.
