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Unhappily Together

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Ended February 25, 2024 • 16 Entries • Created by AJAY9979

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Unhappily Together

In a town with scarce choices, my marriage was more a contract than a courtship, dictated by necessity and my father's insistence on heirs. We had a daughter first, then a son. With that, I considered my obligations fulfilled and turned my attention to the estate, leaving little room for matters of the heart.

Whispers followed me. "Unhappily Together," they echoed in the corridors, murmured by the maids. I met them with a sharp retort, "Mind your own damn business!" but the words lingered, a constant murmur in the background of my life.

It was Peter, the younger, who first dared to breach the walls I had built.

"You have no love for mother?" His question, simple yet loaded, caught me off guard. Before I could muster a defense, Sasha, his sister, drew us into an embrace, a silent acknowledgment of the chasm between us. "You'll understand about obligations when you grow up," I muttered.

Over time, their mother, undeterred by convention, took to teaching, instilling in our children a wisdom I had overlooked. I sneered at this then, but Peter and Sasha found time to visit her in school.

"Do you know the Velveteen Rabbit?" Peter once asked me. It was during one of our rare family gatherings that Peter shared the story of the Velveteen Rabbit, a narrative about love's power to transform and make real a worn-out toy. I smiled at his story.

During his teens, the war took Peter, his letters home a facade of bravery masking his underlying fear. Sasha remained, her presence a constant, gentle nudge towards a semblance of balance.

Peter returned from the war altered, his spirit dimmed by his experiences. Yet, in moments with Sasha, the shadow of his former self would occasionally reappear.

"I understand about obligations, Father," Sasha once cried angrily at me. "I understand it every time I see Peter!"

I felt a pang at this. In a fleeting impulse for unity, I suggested a family portrait.

As we fidgeted before taking the picture, I placed my hand on Peter's shoulder, leaned over to him, and said, "My son, you are not worn out. You are loved, after all." He turned to me, confused at first, then nodded.

The resulting image, now hanging in the main hall, captured our complex interrelations, a silent testament to the unspoken bonds and tensions among us.

In my later years, as the estate's demands waned and my energy ebbed, I sought solace in solitude, contemplating our silent bonds.

I would go to the school, which I had never visited, now much bigger as I contributed, quietly at first, more to its development. My wife, now its Principal, eventually learned of my donations, and helped me walk with my cane.

Peter found love himself. Married an intelligent woman, and they are now often in the city. I wrote him regular letters now, which seems to have been the only thing I could do.

Sasha takes care of the estate. She's managed to make a business out of pigs and farms. Perhaps her early education from her mother actually paid off.

Compelled by a newfound recognition of my deep, unspoken affection, I penned heartfelt letters to each, laying bare my regrets and realizations.

"Sasha, forgive me. I imposed upon you obligations as my father had imposed on me. I now realize you should have been freer to pursue your own passions."

"Peter, my son, the courage you showed, both on the battlefield and within the walls of our home, taught me the true meaning of bravery. I regret not understanding sooner the weight of the obligations you carried, and I wish I had been there to share that burden with you."

"To my wife, your strength and grace in the face of our arranged union and the challenges that followed have been the silent backbone of our family. I see now the love you've quietly woven into the fabric of our lives, and I regret not recognizing and honoring it sooner."

"That's my story," I said, staring at the suited man beside me.

Death nodded, reached for my hand, and we moved on.

Meet Up

she came into

the bar, ordered

a double shot

of tequila

told me

she had just come

from an AA meeting

she was lonely

it was written on her face

the way she swayed and

seemed tolerant

to almost anything

that I could possibly say

she was excited to meet me

said her AA group

was routing her on

to make a new friend

and then she launched into

how she had lost custody

of her two daughters,

because she had beat up her husband

we went to a new bar and

she told me that out back,

she had pummeled a girl so bad

that the pictures of the bruises

were being used against her in

her custody trial

I couldn't say anything back

to her, it was too ratchet

she seemed so sweet

until the stories came out to be

something completely

off kilter

sometimes meeting new people

is fascinating and

here I was, thinking I'd be weird

or make her uncomfortable

by being myself

but she had won

this round, with really

no applause

Burn with Me

No one ever tells you about the inevitability of falling out of love. The emphasis is always on the rose petals, the whispers, the silk sheets and caresses and lips locking with a heat that burns through all of the long-dead shreds at the center of you. You always hear about the healing, the golden glow of discovering a new dawn, of becoming something made of two parts instead of halves. But what about when the sun sets on that fiery flash of soul's collide? What about the days that drag in dreary repetition, slagging steps toward the final flare, before that love tastes of nothing but bitter ash on your tongue?

We all do love to burn.

We all do love to pretend that the flames will never bank, that there will always be fuel for more fire.

But forests aren't infinite in the same way as death and decay. When you've harvested every last twig, you'll find yourself blinking in disbelief at the sullen stumps around your feet. And you might claw at the earth, dig free those dregs, fling them into the flame... if only so you can burn a little brighter, a little longer.

It may be a slow burn, a gentle feeding of sticks into the hunger, stretching that quiet love for many years, but it's usually a forest fire, gobbling up everything in sight. It is all-consuming and soul-searing, but when it's over, you'll find yourself in a barren wasteland.

And then you will begin to hurt.

And if you're one of the lucky ones, you might begin to hate a little.

You might shovel from that ashen ground and fling black charcoal into the pit of your hatred.

You might burn with the putrid seeds of it instead.

And you'll wait, biding time for your lover to make the descent into the depths right along with you.

And you'll look at them and know. Neither of you are cowards as you stand in the chasm of your hatred. You might reach for each other. You might claw and fuck and punish one another slowly in some sick offering to the love that burned you both.

You might stay that way forever, stealing bitter pleasure from one another, faking the curl of lips that once grinned without reservation. You might cry and laugh and build something atop those dead dreams of a world in which love would not destroy. But you'll know, you've been wrecked.

You have been obliterated in the flare of love's supernova.

Or you might be a coward.

You might leave your bitter lover.

You might try again, caught perpetually in the wheel of a million minuscule meteor showers of hearts flaring and failing.

But it'll never stick. It'll never stay.

Because even if you manage to ration, to keep burning... love will end.

Death will claim it.

And you should hope, that your love does not last that long, because then it will stay with you as an eternal suffering, torturing with pangs through the chambers of your rotten heart until it finally shutters to a stop.

No. No one ever tells you about the inevitability of falling out of love.

They don't tell you, because even if they knew the truth, they'd still hope to burn.

And I am like them, too

Always hoping

That you'll burn with me.

Together We were Unhappy

Two different individual.

Too different individual.

Together, the two of us were too different to be more than just ‘individual’ to each other.

Too much time I spent alone in my room, getting all lovesick all over my bed.

Too much time we wasted on this weird journey together.

Two different stories, only one known ending.

Was it even about us being too different? Or is it how I am too much for you to handle?

Was it ever about us being just two individuals who were more than individuals but less than friends? Or is it how we both played the nonchalant game?

I don’t think it was about any of these weird rhetorical questions. There’s only one fact the two of us both know, a fact that is too true; together we were unhappy. Unhappily together as two.

Invisible Hands

He was growing tired of this town. The way the quiet was the quiet of unrest, not of peace. Annandale felt like an old school bomb in the seconds between the end of the countdown and the explosion. Like it was waiting to blow out the windows and throw shards of glass all over these dirty streets, and through skin. And the problem was that he didn’t know why he felt like this, or when the explosion would come, just that he was sure it would.

And the unrest he felt while patrolling the streets, carried with him to his home. Jeffrey Peters pulled into his driveway just after 3am, and sat there for a while. His hands gripping the steering wheel, not wanting to go in, but not wanting to stay out. He was caught in a limbo that was getting harder and harder to pull himself out of. Angie was sleeping, and so was Catrina in her princess bed, and bright pink bedroom. And he told himself he’d grab a quick shower, and then he’d hop in Catrina’s bed and sleep there for awhile, and try to sneak out before Angie awoke.

He just couldn’t deal with her anymore. As strong as a person as he thought he was, she beat him. She defiled him, and weakened him, and broke his spirit. And what came flooding out of that broken spirit, was exhaustion, not exhaustion of the eyes, and the need for sleep (though a good night’s rest wouldn’t hurt any) but an exhaustion deep inside. One that just didn’t want to fight, didn’t want to try, an exhaustion that made it hard for his feet to move, one after the other, and take his body from one point to another. It was an exhaustion that made breathing tiring, and living often unbearable. And he’d never felt that patrolling the streets, even after the shit he’d seen, he could pull himself out in time, but Angie, Angie would kill him and break him far before any low-life small town gang banger would, that’s for fucking sure.

Jeffrey took a deep breath, ungripped the steering wheel, opened the door and walked into his house. Angie had left a note on the kitchen counter telling him that there was meatloaf in the fridge if he was hungry, and there was a small heart on the bottom of the post-it note. He crumpled it up, threw it in the garbage and grabbed a bottle of beer and planted his ass on the couch. He didn’t turn the TV on, or even bother looking at the remote, he just stared into the blackness and wondered if this was what death felt like. A quick thick darkness of nothing. But then he figured death didn’t feel like anything, the pain of feeling was a curse of the living. Death was unburdening yourself of those curses. Then his next thought was, whether or not this was what depression felt like. Not sadness, not waterfalls from the eyes, just a loss of meaning, and a loss of caring whether you ever found that meaning. Because wasn’t that what hope was? Happiness. It wasn’t just being happy during every waking moment, it was the knowing that something that could make you happy was just around the corner, and that saved you from despair. But what if nothing ever made you happy again? He took another sip of his beer.

Upstairs Angie wasn’t asleep. She too, felt like this house was becoming more of a catacomb then a place to breathe, laugh, and escape from a world that was often too cold and too fucking mean. But it wasn’t the meanness of this house that made her sick, and it wasn’t the meanness that had her debating whether or not to take Angie to her parents' place in DC. It was just cold, like the flame had died. And she didn’t know when it happened, but it happened and she couldn’t get it back.

There was a part of her that wanted to walk down those stairs at that moment, and sit on the couch and just put her head on his shoulders, and tell him that whatever was eating him alive, that she could take some of the burden, she could carry some of his poison in her veins, and though they’d both be sick, neither would be dead, and that love would ultimately, in time, push the poison out. But she couldn’t. There was some kind of barrier keeping her from doing what she knew was the right thing to do, what she knew could save their marriage, but she couldn’t, or she didn’t want to. And maybe that was as sure a sign as any, that there was nothing left. She cried silently in bed, and told herself in the morning, she’d call her parents.

After two beers, Jeffrey got up and looked at the stairs leading upstairs. And he couldn’t do it. He just couldn’t bring himself to carry his body up there, and so he didn’t. He grabbed his belt, his keys and he left. And it saddened him to realize that the walk away from the house was much more liberating than the walk to. And as he backed out, he felt he could breathe again. Like those invisible hands that were gripping his throat moments ago, had let go, and decided to let him live.