ONE: ENDING

"I wanted a perfect ending. Now I've learned, the hard way, that some poems don't rhyme, and some stories don't have a clear beginning, middle, and end. Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what's going to happen next. Delicious Ambiguity."
- Gilda Radner

I don't know how it started. There was a joke thrown. Someone overreacted. Someone else defended. There were others around – concerned friends, exasperated friends – but they stood back, wary of our fire. It was the usual song – a melody of insults and accusations hiding an underlying pain, a simmering anger, jealousy and apprehension and discomfort riding on the steady beat of tension, counting away measures of words that didn't really mean anything at all. It got ugly. I yelled and swore and he yelled and swore, I shoved him and he clenched his fists. People were watching but it wasn't anything new, just the same old song, the same old unchanging, monotonous song.

I don't know how it started, but I was so tired of the repetition. Something had to break. Something had to shift or disappear or just changebecause I was so, so tired, so worn from this, whatever this was, whatever made us fight each other so hard for so many years. I was stubborn and he was stubborn and maybe that was it – we butted heads because we had to, because there was no other way to be. We fought because we were both unchanging, solid like the earth, immovable and unyielding. Maybe that was it. Maybe.

I don't know how it started and in the middle of it, I lost track of what words my mouth was forming because my eyes were growing damp. I was horrified at myself. Crying. It didn't register. He said something, something that sounded like the whisper of dream, it was so soft, but the song had skipped and I was thrown off, standing there staring at my wet hand. I was crying. Something had to break. Maybe Ihad to break. Maybe this breaking would heal the hardness of my heart and fix this damned song, this damned, wrenching song. Maybe.

I don't know how it started but the words were still running, and judging by the onyx in his eyes and the acid on my tongue, they weren't harmonizing correctly. Something had deviated. My lungs were aching now, somewhere deep in my chest, past that unshakeable plate of armor, past that icy, glacial heart. This song was new; this song was an intermission, a pause, a hum, a low bridge until the next verse. My throat was raw and his face was red. The fire had been tempered but I knew it would be back, flaring to a blaze, burning and licking the scabs of old wounds, revealing the pain and anger and jealousy and apprehension and discomfort and tension.

I don't know how it started, but I know how it ended. Someone stubborn walked away first, and maybe that would make the difference. Maybe.