The Pygmy Giant

by Fiona

Red wine stains the white carpet and breaks my heart. I think, “why didn’t you tell me before?”, I say “how long?” You cry and I despise you your weakness that has led to this moment, this epiphany of pain. You have destroyed my whole world in just a few words and your downcast eyes. I worry about the stain, the glass is shattered and it feels somehow fitting but still, I worry about the stain. Your friend (did she know, she must have, why did you tell her and not me?) says salt works, or is it sugar, either way it must be applied quickly to stop the stain being permanent.

The shards of glass enter my heart, and lodge there, they will not dissolve or be scrubbed out. Instead they sit there making me bleed inside. One day I will grow new, hardened skin, layer by painful layer, it will cover the shards of glass up and stop me the bleeding. But they have never gone, those shards of glass, or the red stain in my memory that was the day you told me you were never coming home to us, that you had left my dad and, by default, me.

Fiona lives in Surrey and is a mother to two girls under four. She writes while the housework gets left to its own devices.