And as you look to the bedside table, you see a grapefruit. The juices flowing down the sides vulnerably from the soft pale flesh. Ripped apart. Sweet, honeyed liquid; insatiable. How you wished for his teeth to pierce that soft dimpled skin, to bite through the bitterness of the pith and spit the seeds back out.
One by one.
Instead, he lifts the fruit to his mouth and laughs when the juices fall down his face, laughs as the saccharine debris make a mess of him. You pray for him to have the moment of madness that you have been anticipating. For him to become sick to the stomach of your sorry words and finally stuff the fruit in your mouth, to let the bulbous waxy sphere lodge in your throat in the way you deserve. Suffocating. At least then you would be able to breathe your last breath with your fingers interlocked in his, his thumb tracing the sharp knuckle of your thumb in unconscious, weary circles.
Then, at least you would be able to die in your own home.
That was me back then. I sat back, I watched him, lying with one eye to him and one eye to the ceiling. Hoping that, somehow, my eyesight would penetrate the peeling grey ceiling; the sky; the thick clouds that loomed over me.
Whoever told us that clouds were fluffy, soft, aerated and belonging on the fronts of children’s books
The clouds are what keep us on earth. We see them changing colour, shape, forming the outline of a cat or dog the sky which gives us the impression that they’re innocent. They aren’t. They’re what give us a false sense of completion. I was happy, Then. Being trapped on earth with those omnipresent soft grey pillows. But now I’d rather dance on top of them
away, away, away from him, me, myself, this.
I am not the woman I was then. The sweet words that dripped from mouth, he lapped up. But he lapped them up and left me dry. Squeezed senseless, I can’t find it in myself to spill sugar words. I am a shell. I am a corpse. I am free of the soft substance that was easy to swallow. But should I be cast aside? Left to rot? Once the saccharine taste is gone? All that’s left of me is pith, seeds, skin. The bitterness would go past your taste buds, the seeds would sink low, low, low into your stomach.
If only you took a bite.
The skin. Soft to the touch, peachy. Soft to the eye, dimpled. It would leave a bitter taste if your mouth. It would give you a stomach ache for hours, send you vomiting, crying, in pain, ruining the day for you and leaving you with regret.
If only you cared to swallow it, the thing, that fruitful thing, me
Whole.
