Flaw Salad

It always strikes in a moment, and how can you trust something so sudden? After all these weeks or months or years of building, how can you believe that solitary second of disgust, the flash that tells you it’s over?

But it always happens that way. You’re walking together or sitting in a room or naked in bed, and you look to that face—that face you’ve adored a thousand times—and instead of the anticipated comfort, you feel a jolt of pure hatred. This is not your partner, your friend. This is a dolt, a ninny, a lunk.

You try to reject the thought, and at first you succeed. You pretend you never wanted to shove him away, far, far from you. You pretend you never questioned the brilliance of this person, this one you’ve chosen to love.

Of course, you can’t escape. No, no. You can’t escape.

Dread creeps into your spine as you imagine his fingers—those once-beloved fingers—inching across your skin. You shy from his lips, and you shudder beneath him as he heaves over you. His sweat drips into your eyes, and his toenails scrape your skin. You retreat further and further from the wheezing, sneezing, snoring mass you once pulled close, close, ever closer. You cannot love him. You can’t even look at him.

You run from your hatred, but it catches you. It overcomes and consumes. Again, again, that moment, that one fleeting flash, his iridescent skin in the pale blue light, is the end of everything. It always happens this way.

And you ask yourself, this time, is it worth the fight?