Little [Random] Things

They’ve left me alone here, staring down at those closed eyes, the glimmer of your skin already a cold so white my eyes sting. Did you even realize you were alive in my arms before it was over? Did you get to see my face before you closed your eyes?   Mother couldn’t stand to look at me when they swaddled me in clothes and peeled me from the bed. Her face was the sheer grey of a blood steeped cliff, her eyes empty with the hatred that had grown inside her. “It’s better off this way,” she’d pronounced when I wobbled into the hall, my eyes nearly swollen shut. The ache inside me had screamed, beating little fists against the soft underbelly of my heart. Do you know that when the sharp side of her palm hit my cheek, the stars I saw were the ones that had died in your eyes?   Your face is so peaceful I can’t bear to look at it; it burns in the rage bubbling up my throat until I shove the blanket over your face, feeling my throa...

She hadn’t been able to relax since it had started. She was sure she had started it, though, and the notion nearly drove her mad. She hadn’t known it would be so ugly; after all, she’d never even raised her voice against him. “Darling, I’ve been in love with only you all this time, and I swear she means nothing to me!” she remembered him pleading. “I’ve stopped seeing her, I promise.” He would think she had lost her mind, the way she’d reacted. And perhaps she had, for wasn’t it her hand which had waved the kitchen knife around, forcing him to stumble as he tried to back slowly out the door? She rested her palms on the windowsill, examining the tough backside of her hands, framed by their mottled red nails, thinking of the way the knife handle had felt in her palm, heavy and invincible. She didn’t think it was possible to both hate him and love him so furiously, each emotion threatening to strangle her. And she would never again see him, of course, not after she’d very nearly...