What I need is a clean break. A clean break, and the ability to believe with my whole heart, that I can make one.
Your mother used to say that we were joined together at the hip. I'd always laugh - god, I miss Esme - but lately, it's all that I can think about. Two stark white bones, illustrious beneath the scrutiny of a sonographic eye. The knit is seamless, undetectable; it was, at least, until fight by fight we tore one another apart. My recollection of this is vivid, in fact I can still feel the splinters of bone. They pulse through my body tearing holes in every skerrick of vermillion flesh, until I'm certain nothing remains but bloodied shreds. The break itself is mangled. At times, I'm sure I feel the poker-edged porcelain grating against the pallid surface of my skin. I have not healed well. But I'm sure you know that much already.
You and I pillaged those pamphlets from the travel centre in town. We fancied ourselves on some secret sort of mission...an escape from the ceaseless monotony. We were tired of this life. In truth, I think you were lying...you loved it here. But you could see what it was doing to me, and being the romantic fool that you have always been, you hoisted yourself up onto a white horse that was really a flimsy basket of good intentions, and rode in to save me.
We never did get around to leaving. I was worried about the boys...about doing to them what our own mother did to us, and I couldn't do it. I never stop wondering what might have been different if we had just fucking gone.
I think that's why I saved them at first. They were my choose-your-own-ending reminder of the way things could have been. The way things should have been. The way things are never going to be.
Just lately, I began to realise that it isn't just this house that ties me to you...it's my every thought. My every breath. And with this knowledge in mind, I experienced, quite suddenly, an inexplicable desire to run...to run as far away from here as I possibly can.
I glance at my suitcase, packed and ready. The boys will be home soon. I won't deny that I seriously contemplated slipping away into the night. It would be easy...too easy. But I could never do that to them. I love them too much.
And so instead, I sit down on my bed. And I wait.
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