Broken But Whole

Photo by Feyza Daştan

“I’ve been thinking about what I said about not being able to love you the way you love me.  I can’t love anyone like that and I hope that makes you feel better.”

“I don’t care about feelings anymore.  But I am glad that you are feeling better.”  We are still separating.

He thought they’d stay together.  She was not the person he wanted her to be.

Later, he yelled at her.  She declined to yell back this time and imagined her own place, smiling.  No one would yell at her there.  Ever.

Life opened to life.  She grasped it.

He talks to me

Photo by Photo by Samer Daboul

He talks to me. I speak back. He starts tearing me down by raising his voice and when I try to break in and ask why he is yelling at me, he says it’s because I’m not getting the point and I doubled down. But if I were a workmate or a friend who did the same, he would not speak to me in this manner.

Why?

I misspoke.  I tried to correct that, but it was doubling down, which is why I don’t understand why he didn’t calmly explain that.  I tried to break in and correct myself and stop him from seemingly attacking me, I said two words, he snapped his fingers in the air, said “there” and quit talking to me.  Chat over.

It makes me feel like he doesn’t like me.

 

The Recapturing

Photo by Photo by The Glorious Studio

(Prompt: Thumbholes)

Kaylie pushed through the thumbholes of her cardigan, hugging herself tightly.  The chill in the autumn afternoon reminded her of the day Cal proposed.  Now he was gone.  Nothing seemed right.  And she was lost without him.  The chill matched the coldness of his stiff ashen body at the funeral.  Recapturing the rhythm of life without him took time. Yet the ring on her hand still sparkled with hope.  He’d wanted her to move on, to find love again.  She intended that, but not as he’d imagined.  Her art would hang in galleries again.  The light in the darkness.  Hope.
 

The five words I really dislike

 

Photo by Asi Si

He packed up everything he owned leaving little empty spaces around their home. 

“It's not you, it's me.”

A Lover's Touch

 

Photo by www.kaboompics.com

A gentle touch on your knee when I check on you in the morning because you're late getting out of bed. 

“What?” You are terse. 

Has it been that long since we found each other in this world that you now bristle at my touch?