Sheila Wonders

The toxicity between us has reached it’s boiling point — uncomfortable body language, disgusted sighs, snatching of the arms, white lies disguised as jokes have become too familiar. Blatant miscommunication, pre-meditated button-pushing topics make discussion, and we both leave, perplexed that we used to love one another.

A human can only take so much of this before explosion ensues, yet we design it, handcraft it, making the moth to a flame analogy look like child’s play. The co-masters of our own dysfunction, we arrogantly — and when it’s really bad, silently — pick apart the other like yesteryear wasn’t comprised of heart-filling memories, greasy fast food, and rabbit love making; the measurements of young love and life of our generation.

Even through all of this, we know not to push too far, too hard, come too close. In hindsight, I know that we often have, we’re just equally addicted to the trauma and shock value of the next terrible thing. The pendulum swings on every undesirable, just enough to enrage the other, but not hardly enough to permanently cut ties. In too deep, emotions too entangled, responsibilities shared.

It’s not good for either of our egos; our tethereds suffer, too, but the sex…is otherworldly. Angry, releasing, lusty, handsy, seasoned, amicable, secret. All the things it shouldn’t be make it the hallucinogenic experiences we crave. In spite of all this power sitting dormant in me, I oblige to suffering. A true example of knowing better while your body convinces you that she can hardly function without it. Sweaty Flesh.

We eat each other. Our bodies, hot, empty corpses where excitement and ambition used to live. Now we poorly co-exist in a world that’s brutally taught me how to use my voice and self-advocate. It’s taught you the same things, only our cross deliveries of those lessons dangerously overlap. Lost-in-translation has become our language, devoid of love, compassion, and comfort.

If we are victims, it is of our own doing.

Not breaking up.
Not being honest.
Not expressing ourselves.
Not avoiding the revolving cycle of repression and passive aggressiveness.
Not abstaining from attacking the other so cavalierly and offering apologies substantiated enough just to bed the other when convenient.

God aint in this — we did this mess to us. When one moment breaks the previously created mold into something newly unfathomable, tears of anger and exhaustion downpour. I damn you to hell without realizing if heading down is your fate, then so it is mine. No, God aint in this. Just two motherfuckers who refuse to employ the Golden Rule at minimum, who are equally infatuated with golden means at best.

Haven’t we done this long enough? I wonder as I leave the key under the mat and head upstairs awaiting your arrival.

I could kill you for your complicit treachery, but first, you owe me in blood lust. The moment will pass and frustration will return in deep fullness. Our goodbye will be quick and purposely free of eye contact. I imagine until the next circumstance arises, we will both lie in seething wait for the other. Because before the pettiness lets loose, three-second sombers marvel back at each other, wondering how we got here, and why we choose to stay.

Until the next spell.

May 27, 2019
© Ariel C. Williams