Lovebirds

I look at you across the table. I’m going to blink and you won’t be there. Or I will be somewhere else. We won’t be together, that’s the point. That’s what I crave more than this coffee. I craved you once. Not anymore. So I want this to be a waking dream and I want the dream to end. I want to wake up.

It began with the sound of your eating. That constant smacking of the lips. Your willingness to talk and roll food round your mouth at the same time, making the consonants suck and squelch. When did that begin? Has it always been so? I wonder that I could have been so blind, or deaf.

Beyond that, your shallowness. Your ten pairs of shoes amused me. Thirty pairs and I see the truth of it. You say a woman can never have too many shoes. I say that is an overworked platitude: a way to disguise your dependency on material possessions, like your shoes and your handbags. You have no depth.

Your beauty was once your cloak of invisibility. Now time has eaten away at the fabric of that cloak, tied weights to your wrinkled flesh. Now everything is on show.

I think the truth; you are old and no longer desirable.

***

Youth is the place where wisdom is yet to grow. Believe me dear husband, if it were otherwise I would not be here now, revolted by the greasy breakfast sheen on your lips and the coffee spilt on your tie.

You are pear shaped now. Did you know that? Every morning I see the dark fold beneath your stomach. Is that what you see when you look in the mirror? Or do you still see a v-shaped torso and slim waist? You will never be that again. You’ve let it go for too long. Too many business trips. Too many boozy lunches. It would not surprise me if your liver was beyond saving. It would not upset me either.

I have almost forgotten how you used to make me laugh; how you teased me remorselessly about my shoes. You drank champagne from one of them once, to show how much you loved me. How I fell for it all. Now I ask myself, when did you last touch me?

Coward! How I despise you. Now it is all you can do to maintain a silence, holding in the words you really want to say. Should I utter them for you? Should I scream them out loud? You despise me. Or should I mirror your cowardice and hold my angry tongue.

***

She walks with him to the front door, helps him with his coat, pats the knot of his tie and rubs at the coffee stain with her thumb. They smile, peck each other dutifully on the lips and he slides out into the day. She waits by the door, watches him pull away, returning his wave. She closes the door, but not before noticing how bright the sun is, and how crisp the shadows.

At the end of the street he exchanges smiles with the lollipop lady before disappearing into the rush hour traffic.

***

Somewhere, without asking why, a flock of starlings rise as one into the sky and begin their aerial ballet.