I am a Good Listener
By Maddison Scott
I hear you complain about your husbands, girlfriends, bosses, uncles, mistresses and mother-in-laws. I feel the heat of your words as they push onto my skin, the stroke of every vowel slithering up your leg or down the swell of your blouse. I smell your days-gathered sweat, the back-to-back perfume sprays, the unwashed synthetic soled shoes. I know where your lover's moles are, the color of the hair stuck in your shower drain and the feral lullabies your cat wails in the middle of the night.
Just yesterday, I listened to one of you lie to your boss about being sick when you were just really, really hungover. I consumed sixteen episodes of Friends with you, watched you search online for luxury clothes your banking app shows you can’t afford and memorized every one of the crow’s feet you desperately paint away.
The day before, I tasted the gush of cortisol as another one of you paced your living room floor, certain you were dying of an infectious disease that was eradicated in the 19th century. I could have told you that but you never really listen.
I do.
I listen to your friends too. One of them comforts you with heart and kiss emojis then messages your other friends with gifs of people rolling their eyes or making vomiting gestures. They curate playlists of sad girl songs and scroll through pictures of aesthetically pleasing kitchen designs while complaining that you are the worst but also, they’re lonely.
Your father searches for hot girls nearby and how to fix a broken radiator and does taking anti-anxiety medication make me woke? He watches YouTube videos of skateboarding accidents and houses being swept away in flash floods. He tells his co-workers he spent the weekend mowing the lawn and watching wrestling when he really spent it rereading a tattered copy of a Joan Collins book.
Another one of you films yourself licking peanut butter off of public objects. July 16th: a lamppost on Griffin Street. July 21st: a billboard at the Hart Lane bus stop. July 27th: a park bench on Kelvin Street. July 30th: a guard rail on Ritter Highway. The videos are overlaid with Beethoven’s Rage Over a Lost Penny as if to give an air of prestige. People send obscene amounts of money so they can suggest the next dining site.
I also hear you swoon about your husbands, girlfriends, bosses, uncles, mistresses and mother-in-laws. I feel the warmth of your sweet nothings under my skin, the stroke of every consonant massaging your sore feet or kissing the dip above your collarbone. I smell your hard-earned sweat, the memory-infused perfume sprays, the played in, worked in, lived in shoes. I know where your lover's sensitive spots are, the color of their hair in the golden hour and the adorable nursery rhymes your toddler sings when you get home from work.
THE END
Author Bio: Maddison Scott is an Australian writer and teacher whose short stories have appeared in, among other places, The Molotov Cocktail, Flash Fiction Magazine and The Eunoia Review. She can be found online at: maddisonscott.wordpress.com