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On My Way Out

Jane Butkin Roth


��You would not understand should I run screaming from this restaurant--because you remember it was here we started out so tenderly, here I got lost so quickly, having fallen into your ocean green eyes. I must not have noticed that you grind your teeth or clear your throat when there’s a pause in conversation. The way you move your hands and face when you talk is alarming, so disconnected from your words. Grates my nerves, assaults my dignity. It is all I can do to sit in this chair across from you, and even that I cannot do without clenching my jaw, or grabbing a fistful of tablecloth to give me strength to last the evening. You would not understand; you remember my telling you loving you was a privilege. What was I thinking? There was a time when I wouldn’t let go of your sound, your smell, your eyes-- they’re so beady and calculating-- and the way you drew me to you. Now sitting at “our table” where we exchanged amorous glances, I see nothing more than a composite of your annoyances; I did not anticipate this, could not have imagined it, but what I long to do-- I am coming out of my skin-- is run... from all your compulsive anal retentive disorders, not to mention your touch-- I can’t forget that-- which gives me the all-the-way-down-to-your-liver chills like the scariest Hitchcock movie seen when I was just a kid. And the way you hold your hand lame on my back or place a scrawny finger on the table, such impotent gestures; it’s the way your voice stays high when you think you have something important to contribute, and how you sometimes scratch your crotch in public. I’ve had it up to here with all your impatience for movie and restaurant lines-- and dirt and children-- it’s the nauseating way your tongue runs ’round your upper lip after you’ve tasted something sweet. Did you never wonder why I stopped baking that peach pie you so enjoyed-- and if you remember, you requested more? It’s all these things turned adoration to revulsion makes me wonder: was I just hard up, or what?

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