Them’s Fightin’ Words
They took their places, in their customary battle positions. She was on white tonight, he on black. They switched often. Gender was not the battleground.
The corner she’d painted him into didn’t blend well with the image of himself he’d so carefully curated. For months they’d played the codependency game, until they both knew the titles of all the songs by heart. Problem was, they both got off on constantly one-upping each other until there were no more squares to step onto.
“Why didn’t you…”
“You should have…”
Blame got thrown around like it was a religion. Little, snippy comments betrayed the underlying issues they skirted, until all that articulation only placed them face to face, ad infinitum. A daily stand-off, with no resolution.
Hurt volleyed over anger, which hurdled into jealousy, which transmuted into twisted tongues of hypocrisy, until both slid into costumes of far more repulsive monsters than they’d ever fathomed.
Beginning love bursts into little safe houses like a burst pipe, flooding concepts, altering opinions, resurfacing every theory — but love doesn’t simply drabble away like bad fiction with no plot. It seeps away in holes punched into walls that let in the unbearable coldness, and let out far more.
In word lances that strike beneath heavy eyelids that want nothing more than to swell shut.
Their cohabitation persisted out of necessity until unease grew, and turned into malignant sludge inside the walls. Denial about their failures became layers encasing them both in a forced impotence to new growth.
The only thing left to them was the long, cold ultimatum that they ignored vehemently, while decisions that were too hideous to make choked out the dwindling light in the room.
It was only when they both stripped off neurotic tendencies, varnished needs to be right, and sandblasted egos that they remembered.
It wasn’t the happily ever after. They’d both taken that course, and failed brilliantly. They recalled the corner where they met. Former selves they’d locked away in towers. Fairy tale fights over dirty dishes, and unfolded laundry. The ease of making up that they’d lost somehow during the war.
They recalled what the soft blanket of forgiveness felt like.
Gave up on Checkmate. And repainted The End.
