I awake to the cacophony of pans hitting Formica.  He is cooking breakfast again.  The kind of breakfast that you eat and eat until you’re so full, you feel like your esophagus rests on a pillow of eggs and ham.

He whistles an off-key tune (California Girls?), his cheery disposition ever on display.  He might be great at breakfast and a catchy melody, but I’ve watched the margin between his good traits and bad traits deteriorate in the last few months.  I want a “break”, but my need for security dictates I stay.  Forget feelings and passion; I haven’t imagined for awhile that I am “in love”.

I roll out of bed and segue from the comfort of dreaming to the barely human thing that stumbles around every morning imbued with crankiness, plaque, and eye goo.  I flick on the TV (“Goddamn propaganda on every channel,” he always says, then laughs), sitting, waiting to muster the bravado to leave, to change my life, to live without the fetter of commitment to another person.  But then he speaks:

“What’s a seven letter word for ‘throaty guffaw’?”

He’s playing his favorite game with me:  Flipping Bacon and Making Up Crosswords.  It amuses him to hear me answer quickly, correctly, though he will “buzz” triumphantly when I am wrong.

“Chortle?” I say, not allowing discontent to journey across my face.

“Ahh…maybe,” he teases.  “But I’ve never really doubted your command of the English language.”  He grins that “when things were good” grin, trying to cajole the tiniest of smiles from me.  (I am not so easily swayed.  I have long since stopped giving him the satisfaction of making me happy.) Pause.  Then, “You’re cute in the morning.”

My courage is gone.  I’ll wait for tomorrow.  Again.

Tags: creative writing, writing contest, writing contest finalist

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