The wants and the needs of a woman your age

The evening leans against the walls of the room, where the colours of the day have already begun their slow, reluctant slide into dusk. In the dim light, she stands, an altar to some impervious, inevitable idea of symmetry. Her lips — painted with invidious intent — seem to whisper to the air, an invitation, perhaps to the world outside or perhaps only to herself. The world holds its breath as the reflected glow of sunset steals in, tracing shadows on the wall while languorously arching its back in an all-consuming desire stretching beyond the room, beyond the window, into the dimming sky.

She stands there, in front of the mirror, applying her makeup with the same practiced care evinced a thousand times before. The gloss of a thousand lies glimmers from the deep berry shade of the lipstick. She always was a woman who painted the truth in shades that didn’t exist.

Her hair coils and twists like the thread of an old story — one that never quite unravels, but tangles further each time she tells it.

The light from the mirror quavers as if on a bad acid trip, every inch of her standing still and somewhere else at once. You can actually hear the last gasp of daylight, its breath sucking through the cracks of the room, shadows stretching further, warping, unhinged. Everything and nothing.

The question not of whether she will go, but where she will go, and with whom. She is always the second last to know what’s been decided. In this category, I am the undefeated heavyweight champion of the world. And that mist in her eyes feels like rain on the fire in my soul.

I watched her, not moving. Never moving. I wanted to say something, anything, but the words  stayed inside, stuck somewhere deep where the things that matter stay locked. “Ruby,” I said, though she didn’t turn, and maybe I didn’t want her to turn.

“For God’s sake, turn around.”

She was turning now, and I could hear the rustle of her dress, the soft whisper of her leaving me here, again. And I knew what that sound was. It wasn’t the screen door that slammed, but the years between us, each one falling like a stone, pulling us further apart. That was the sound that filled the room. Not the door, not the things that could be touched, but the things that couldn’t, the things felt only when you’re standing at the edge of them.

She froze for a second, just a second when she heard my voice. But it was enough. I could see it in her reflection — her eyes were colder than I remembered, sharp enough to cut through the glass between us. And then a sound I knew too well.

You don’t forget the sound of a woman leaving.

It is the silence after the door, the thought left to echo in the hollow spaces between her footsteps and your breath. Don’t take your love to town.

I wanted to grab her, pull her back, tell her all the things I should’ve said before, back when my legs worked right, back before the war, back when I could’ve been the man she needed.

If I could move I’d get my gun and put her in the ground.

The gun stays where it is.

I stay where I am.