At The Table Too Long

By Lucy Harbron - 18:52

My eyes have been wandering, fatigued with familiarity and flirting with my next go round. I’ve never sickened myself of a name but I’m catching myself yawn at these faults I’m too lazy to fix, too frugal to go down that way, so bored of talking to you about.

And I wake up to another day. I didn’t think we could spend any more time together, that there must be a cap off. A tick on a list to say you’ve done your bit, like a friend who knows all your best stories and you’re now past your prime, a friend that knows you so well they process your feelings for you and tell you it back in simple words you might understand. A best friend like that, cut and dry, pressure off from a point. But we’ve been sat here for months now and all the walls keep growing yellower and yellower with the stain of our conversation and I’ve never noticed the wallpaper before. Did you put it up? 

I’m getting terrible visions of marriage. Is this what five weeks after I do feels like? A kind of breathless exhaustion every time you think about it too much, catch eyes on already bad days and hold eyelashes to spiral down into the fearful definition of forever. No outs here. Just me and you, me, with only death as a door and divorce out of the question without burning all the nerves away. It’s a lot. 

But you know I liked our drinks in the honeymoon phase, dressing up to sit together in a different room as a treat, when you let me not feel silly wearing heels in the kitchen and we concocted sweet poisons, shaking jam into gin with an ever-encouraging inner monologue that sounded like us laughing together.

Then there’s always a splinter and it can never be enough for long enough. Wake up and say hello, testing out tones and prepared for minor, squeezing my eyes together as tight as I can like a reset button that does nothing but click. I’ve started waiting for this side of you at the door of our attic and you hide the keys behind your back again, jingle as I do my series of activities where you demand more from me to get less of you, interrupting as I tell you again I’m trying.

This is that conversation; sat at the table with nothing to promise but effort. 

We have the talk daily, reaffirming with changing conviction, as the room glows fluorescent and I squeeze the promise from my squashed lungs.

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