I can get there on my own. you can leave me here alone.
He expects her to argue.
He anticipates vitriol and venom.
He expects the world to crash down around them, powerless in the face of her rage.
But she goes quiet instead. And perhaps this is worse. Perhaps this is more lethal. Because he has wounded her in a way that too closely resembles defeat. She speaks but she does not say much of anything at all - oh, okay - she says and the distant sound of it slips a blade between his ribs that smarts when he breathes.
He does not know how they arrived here. He does not know how they got from that clearing in the forest where she’d threatened to end his life and he’d all but begged her to do it to this clearing in an altogether different forest, her cheek laid against his shoulder and their child sleeping at her feet. He has always been a simple man, never one to disturb the waters. He has skirted through his life without ever making much of an impression on anyone. Why is this different?
Why is he standing here now, breaking a heart he didn’t deserve to be handed in the first place? Still, he grits his teeth and tries for a steady breath but the ribs smart and the lungs ache and there is a vise that tightens around his throat. He turns and kisses her head and stands there in the thick suffocating silence that follows.
He wants to say something, wants to offer her some sense of relief or solace or consolation. But he does not know how. So, he stands there with his tongue caught between his teeth. (But he does not bleed, not the way their daughter does – at least not physically). The heart thumps out a worthless beat and he exhales a shuddering sigh as the weary eyes drift closed.
BETHLEHEM
I'm just tryin' to do what's right. oh, a man ain't a man unless he's fought the fight.
