Skip to main content

Voice Exercise #1

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 tried to kill him, not even if she spent the rest of her life saying she was sorry.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Unburdening

Too many things lie between us, quivering, quaking in darkness like silence, or a laugh being shoved back down your throat. I press my cheek against the top of your head, your hair burning with the fidgeting fingers of the sun, listening to words that have no shape, or sound, or feel, just words that sit like fat potatoes between me and you, words that build up like gum under school desks and surround you. Tendrils, thin wispy letters, dig their way through your skin, overgrown bean plants. Everytime I try to pull one down, they rip at your skin and you cry out. Your silence floats like a feather, suspended below my mouth; when I speak it flutters with the fluctuations of my voice. Too many things hold us at a distance, two lone figures across each other, toes at the edge of a seemingly uncrossable gap. I heave stones into the darkness, my hand tight around yours, placing trust and love and faith and understanding like stepst...
Post a Comment
Read more

After You

we buried the treasure box together- two dusty heads bobbing in the dirt hands scratching at earth and grime-caked nails, one for one and two for two: forgetting which fingers belonged to me shiny faces watching earnestly as the metal box slowly disappeared- rocks and grit skittering across the surface- you grabbed my hand and I touched the oozing soil around our treasure, the easy product of a six year old girl and boy who swore forever and ever * turning it over so that every scratched scar matches the wrinkles etched in my palms, not a more perfect fit than the way tears mold themselves to the withered lines down  my cheek alone I stand amid fresh laid earth I think to sit and tumble to knees hands catching fingers sinking nails deep- begin to claw through the tears until the treasure box falls deep within the tomb alone, one not two, sweeping dust over the metal lid- crooked back and withered frame time lost but time lost wi...
Post a Comment
Read more

Daydream

Back of the classroom is a shadowy place, flickering edges and flimsy images- one, two, three, four, gone again. Five, six, seven, eight, fingers digging deeper, harder, tracing angelically- angel’s bruises. Chanting, what you don’t know will never hurt you, what you know stays forever, a lie, a fat, goose plump lie A hundred ways to say NO gather force, while fingers press harshly, rib after rib.
Post a Comment
Read more