mildly free

So tonight and for many days now you have had to fend for yourself. You’ve had to find ways to stave off the demon of depression. Had to exercise some discipline and remember to take out the dishes.

For the last few days she’s been working full-time. Her little shop needs her to be an acting-manager for as long as it takes for the new manager to start. Maternity leave means that the last girl left and the new one won’t start until her last position has been filled, a full three weeks away.

So she has started working full-time. Only they don’t open on a Sunday or a Monday.

You work in retail, so for you there is no ‘weekend’ per say. So you get Sunday off and determine to set off on a little journey into town to get a coffee and write some. Because you haven’t written for so long you’re not sure you are a writer anymore.

Instead you get her in your ear, tugging your sleeve – asking for you to stay home until she is ready to leave for the coffee shop with you.

So dutifully you stay, like any guy with a girl like her would do, out of fear that she will bring this up when you’re with company and make you into the chauvinist monster. Make you into the monstrous man in the face of her feminine fragility.

So you both get to the café and some 30mins in she gets to texting and finding an escape. 5mins later she gets a reply and is invited to a Sunday roast.

Some 6 hours later you’re on your own at 7pm, long done with writing and thinking about what you might do this evening. Whether you might both cuddle up on the sofa, that maybe you should get a bottle of wine, make an effort, make something of a nothing night. These Sundays, which are less and less your days.

And then at 11pm you remember that she doesn’t work Mondays. And then somehow you know she isn’t coming home. You resign yourself to the fact that, whatever she does of a night away from you, she’ll be doing again tonight.

And in your mind she’s doing all the things that a grubby mind might imagine her doing.

She’s got a dick in her mouth. Far in, like she’s never done to you before. She’s making an effort with this other man. Or maybe it’s a woman and maybe she’s rutting against her with an enthusiasm she fakes when she’s with you.

In your mind she’s all you wish she was and are glad she isn’t.

So you sleep, knowing that sleeping alone is the saddest thing about it.