Glass

He kept a damaged lamp on the floor by his bed. A light bulb encircled by broken, jagged glass. Anne was frightened of the lamp from the first moment she laid eyes on it. All she could see when she looked at it was her own white flesh, sliced and drowning in red blood. Why did he keep something so dangerous and broken?


They went to Camden and wandered through the stalls. She made her only purchase of the trip--a black velvet military jacket. The second the Indian vendor slid it onto her shoulders, she was sold. Byron bought a straw hat. With dexterity and tiny fingers, she un-wove the tag for him.


The violet hour began to creep and she suggested a pub by the river. She perched outside while he retrieved her chips and bottle of wine. He attentively showered her with packets of ketchup and mayonnaise and little salt and pepper sachets. Suddenly it began to rain, and they had to scramble for a leather couch inside.


They decided on another bottle of wine, and halfway through, she became almost inexplicably mad. The rain poured and poured outside, beating against the windows. She angrily got up for the bathroom and knocked over the empty bottle with her leg.


Embarrassed, hot, and red.


He was talking about love?


She returned to the table. He was evasive and full of lies and lines and meekness. Her heart turned to sickening stone. This was his rejection; the time had finally come. He was confused as to why she was suddenly crying, and he suggested they leave.


She jerked her body blindly from him and made a mad dash for the tube. He caught her arm and tried to understand. She urged useless words and victimized stories at him through her tears. He embraced her on the train as she shuddered with sobs.


"If you weren't so vulnerable... you could have me in the palm of your hand. I'm just so afraid of crushing you," he told her.


"I knew it. I never should have been myself. You don't see me, just like everyone else!"


Of course she was vulnerable. The whole trip had placed her on a jagged edge, teetering between reality and insanity. And there she was unmistakably and unbearably in love with someone who wasn't in love with her!


She seethed, brimmed with rage. Her breathing became rapid, and she flinched and pulled away at his touch.


Don't tell me what is wrong with me when I have just been being honest about who I am!


When they reached home, he prattled excuses about another girl. Insane, out of place delusions that best would have been revealed months and months ago.


Fool fool fool!


She thrust her anger and her rage into fixing their bed. She shoved him out of the way and drunkenly struggled to pull the corner of the sheet taught. As she lifted the mattress, her foot slipped. The sole grazed along the jagged edge of the broken lamp. A long, thin slice, like a paper cut that doesn't bleed. She didn't cry out or tell him. Of course she had been cut. Of course he had caused her pain and suffering and an injury like a stone in her shoe. The thing she had most feared had come to pass, and the supple white was flooded with crimson.


That night, she longed for his hand on her neck to crush her, strangle her, or snap her sternum in two.