wearywater
After four years of darkness and distance, we connect again. But I am not the version of myself he's used to---or the one he wants. I am fearless and bold, ready to spit on life before me. I tread on empty compliments and demand attention in the form of fearsome intellect. I am not the shy little girl he knew growing up, the one who used to quake under covers and wished to be invisible the moment attention was trained on her. I am unabashedly me, ready to suck the teat of life offered before me until it runs dry. I'm not afraid anymore.
And so he no longer has any use for me.
He scorched the underside of her good, cast-iron pans much in the same way he scorched her heart. Both were too good for the likes of him, yet endured the abuse.
Years later, she found, both would be doing as strong as ever without him around to try to misuse them again.
He scorched the underside of her good, cast-iron pans much in the same way he scorcher her heart. Both were too good for the likes of him, yet endured the abuse.
It would be breakout artist of the year, she guessed. That would be the title won by the end of the night. She could feel it in her bones. After all, she had given so much to her music---endless hours, endless amounts of money, endless auditions. More than so much.
Everything.
So when the name was called, her disappointment was catastrophic.
Her tongue twisted in her mouth. If anything, what came before was just a distraction. What mattered was now. This was real. Thieving time wound slowly around her as she began to take her first few steps.
The bus lurches to the right, gravel spitting from under its tires. She had been a fool for thinking this would be easy, a clean break. She looked out toward the darkened horizon as the greyhound lurched again. Even the weather seemed to be working against her.
The shift between enemy and acquaintance is sudden, and most definitely unexpected. It turns one summer evening, shaped between the little space allowed between two grappling bodies when the sexual tension finally, finally snaps. He's there, of course, the subject of your violent fantasies--yet you can't stop him when his lips collide with yours again, and again, and again.
After all, it was building up to this--either this, or death.
She turns to me, relentless, eyes dark in the moonlight. There's something about her, something I can't quite place, that makes my skin crawl and my stature shrink and my mouth taste inexplicably of bile. I don't think I know her, not anymore. I wonder if I ever even knew her in the first place. Her lips are sharp and curled in amusement as she watches me.
Heart thudding, eyes damp, I am nothing but afraid.
The delivery was long---longer than she'd like to remember, now that everything was said and done. But it did create a sense of accomplishment as she held her daughter, looking at her wrinkled pink face. Like all that hard work had finally amounted to something.
Something wonderful.
She didn't always like to think about all that she had done to reach this far. All the bodies she'd had to step over. All the people cut down along the way. She was now a member of the exclusive few who had power. She couldn't let a thing like guilt weigh her actions down anymore.
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