by Ed Higgins
Megan beat up on herself later over the unsaid. It had stuck between her teeth like threads of half-waking dream thoughts. And especially for the sorry she had said (three fucking times), and even felt, damn it. At the time. Whatever offense she must have caused was really how unaware of his sudden movement to the wrong side of what used to be him for all these months. While he had been unnoticeably drawing back from her, freezing fog-mist rising like marsh gas obscuring what was really there in front of her all along. The not-him. She would occasionally shiver from the deep chill, the indentation to her heart. A wane slide she had denied in those rustlings of early unwanted message. Later, frost-turned leaves were dropping too readily around her like a chilled autumn-struck tree. Her mind becoming meager, lonely of wanted touch. Then the winter's vivid cold finally sat and stared at what she was still clinging to. To what was already apparently undone. For weeks, no, months, she only knew walking around in bruised dreams. All the drifting apart clichés undeniably there she had refused to admit. Then his this isn't working out. And all she could find herself saying was she was sorry, then crumple fucking stupidly into heartbeat silence. The shrapnel of betrayal everywhere.
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The flash piece grew out of reading somewhere women are more apt to say "sorry" than men. Currently in Donut Factory, A. E. Phillips, Editor, Spr. 2016, Issue 2, pp. 49-50.
"For weeks, no, months, she only knew walking around in bruised dreams."
Really nice, Ed!
"the shrapnel of betrayal"
*
I feel the desolation, which I could have done without today, but hey. *
Those who give also give regret, unearned.
Like Matt, I feel it too.
"...the deep chill, the indentation to her heart." *
Very effective there's a lovely sense of understated emotional atmosphere here. I think it really works, gets to a person, I 'felt it' too just like Tim and Mathew.
I loved
'Her mind becoming meager, lonely of wanted touch.'
Just about says it all.
What Amanda said *
Heartbreak. This brings it all back. I can feel it. Wonderfully cohesive.