Sealed
By Gregory Janetka
Her mouth tasted of chemicals. The raw, acidic, bile-flavored chemicals sold to young women by convincing them they're not pretty enough. Profit margins shored up and counted on from seething insecurity. We laid there in bed, she looking up at me, expectantly, longingly, waiting—waiting for me to convince her I still loved her, convince her of what we both knew, that it was over and that these last weeks have been a sad façade, a grasping at the past glory of when we thought we knew each other but knew nothing.
She'd laid next to me for an hour, talking on and off, touching me, waiting for that kiss. I couldn't give it to her. Every bit of me recoiled in a cowardice that left me unable to climb out of bed or push her away. When she hadn't gotten what she wanted she went to the bathroom and haphazardly removed her makeup. She came back and slid in beside me once more, putting my arm into hers once more. Saying nothing she looked up with those big cow eyes and implored me to kiss her, to reassure her that these fights—these knockout screaming matches as of late—meant nothing more than simply adding to the dreaded, shrinking-violet relationship of a word, "growth." Perhaps they could've been party to such nonsense, if they'd gone anywhere, if we'd listened to one another, if either of us gave a damn beyond our individual pursuits and creature comforts, if we'd dropped the façade and our guards for a brief moment, to see that this, standing in front of us, was a person, a person, a human who we'd been with for the better part of six years, laughed and cried with, made love to, laid with and shared inside jokes with—rather than the enemy, the scapegoat, the cause of all our respective ills and suffering.
Instead they landed squarely where they began—in anger, ignorance, and delusion.
And so when she stared at me I forced myself to kiss her, to end the standoff, if only to be able to say I did and take the blame from my inaction. And when I did she tasted of those sour chemicals. I pulled away and she blinked and tried to smile, as she always did, saying "that was nice," but the words were empty, dry, guarded, as was her attempt at a smile. And at that moment I should've ran, should've grabbed my few possessions from among hers and ran as far and as fast as I could, but instead my arm remained intertwined in hers. Looking at her desperate, sad, fake expression, I tasted the chemicals lingering on my lips and tongue and took a match to everything I'd always claimed to so deeply believe in.
"Yeah, that was nice," I echoed, sealing the fate of us both.
THE END