Loyalty

by: Phineahs Gray


I awake as the sun rises. It’s light shines through the thin flesh of my eyelids, chagriningly forcing them open. I roll to my other side. In the shadow of my body I hold on to the darkness. My ingenious escape from the sun lasts for what seems but a second. I let out a low sigh and ruefully open my eyes.

Before me she lies, like a beautiful heroin fallen upon the battlefield. I look deep into her closed eyes. Through the flesh and bone, I peer, in an effort to see the very thoughts that only she knows.

I can feel the distance between us as the breadth of a continent.

The distance has grown over the past few weeks.

At first she was coming home from work later than usual. Then, she began to spend all her time talking on the phone with nothing but a hello for me.

After coming home one night she dressed up as if she was going out for an evening on the town with her girlfriends. When she came home she smelt of men’s cologne.

The next day she missed dinner with me. The day after, she didn’t come home until the morning next.

That Friday she casually said she was going out of town for the weekend, and that I couldn’t come.

On that Saturday her brother came over. He seemed almost happy, as if everything was wonderful. I couldn’t help but feel he knew what was really going on. He stayed for only a few minutes.

When she came back Sunday night she walked right past me and into the bedroom. After shutting the door I heard her speaking on the phone.

Almost two weeks have past since then.

Though using all my effort I fail to see past her closed eyes, or even get a glimpse of her thoughts. Getting out of bed I hear her mutter something about breakfast. I come back in with the paper to find her in the kitchen making me breakfast.

As I eat she says nothing. She seems as if she is in another world. What frightens me is the world seems joyous. She leaves for work, but I stay home. I sit on the couch and stare out the window. The day grows bright, then dark again.

Late into the evening I hear the lock turn, but I do not budge. As she walks into the room her steps seem heavier than normal. Looking at her feet I slowly follow the vertical line of her body up. Before I get to her waist I see a tear float down. Skipping directly to her face I find it red and covered in tears.

Jumping off the couch, I run to her. She drops to her knees and begins to hug me. Between moans of sorrow she is able to force out, "I’ll never… find… anyone better than… you. I’m sorry… I’m sorry… I should have known… he was just… using me… You’re the only… one I can trust. I promise I’ll never leave you again."

We walk back to the couch. She flips on the television and we watch an old favorite of hers. After a few minutes she looks down at me on her lap and says, "Spot, you’re the best dog ever!" I bark back, in an effort to let her know I will always love her. I think she understands.

"Expectation"

by TheScorpionSparrow


Sitting at the traffic light my foot lightly depresses the brake pedal in expectation of moving to the throttle. My eyes watch the traffic light of the cross street in expectation of it turning from green to yellow, signaling the expected change of the light facing me from red to green.

Time passes with no change. Cars come and go, but there is no change. My leg begins to ache. My eyes grow heavy with weariness. Still the light does not change. Minutes pass, then hours, then days. Still there is no change. Yet, I know the light will change. It just makes sense that the light should change. I have to believe that it must change. As my expectation begins to waver, my mind drifts to wonder how it was I came to be at this crossroad in the first place.

I was born ten days after my expected arrival to a beekeeper and a newly careered housewife. My sister, older by two and a half years, sat with my Pap and Grandmother in the room in which those who sit are in expectation of life or death.

Those sitting for me had mixed expectations. As for my mother… the expectations were of a healthy blue-eyed boy. Always eager to live up to my youthful expectations, I arrived just as she expected, except, that is, for coming out feet first. I must have wanted to come into this world on my own two feet.

My sister had been born with numerous health defects, causing her to crack open Death’s door one too many times for my mom’s liking. Expecting that this problem might reoccur, she took every precaution, and vitamin, she could to assure herself that her second child’s life would be a healthy one.

With a head twice the size of my body, I was expected to be the genius of the family. So, I considered myself just that. Making me more the smart-ass than the genius. In my defense, I had not yet realized there was a difference.

Time passed and a new genius arrived. No longer expected to be the smartest, I fell into the roll of second best, a place far too comfortable for me.

"Don’t worry about so much, son. This world will soon be no more, and you will never of had to have faced the problems of an adult. So, just be a kid." Not having a future, I saw no reason to plan nor invest in one. The result? By the time I was twelve I was a contented silver metal futureless kid.

From that acquiesced belief forward I always felt my life was on the verge of ending. Not that I had any suicidal thoughts, but that I felt life, as I knew it, should have ended many times over. Looking forward I feared that no matter what I set out to accomplish it would not come to fruition. This life wouldn’t last long enough for the accomplishment's curtain call.

As year after year passed and this world continued to be, my earlier expectations needed to be adjusted. Enter stage right ‘The Girl’… Enter stage left ‘The Girl’… Enter Center Stage ‘The Girl’…

And still my bed breeds the bacteria of but a single soul. Still this world drags on. What now do I make of my expectations, but to exist and not expect.

Still I sit at that traffic light; eyes focused on the crossroad’s light; waiting for its change from green to yellow, signaling my own light’s change from red to green.

When will I realize there is no crossroad?

When will I realize the green light at which I stare is that of my own?