by Sharon Bidwell
There’s fire in her eyes.
She stares at the clock. His being late is now a certainty and woe-betide him when he sets foot over the threshold. She is sick and tired of being let down, never knowing if he’ll turn up at all some evenings or ‘pull an all-nighter’, always followed by the same tired apologies.
Flowers and chocolates make everything right, or so he believes, though on some level she knows that she is just as responsible, as much to blame for his mistake: she has never bothered to correct him.
She wonders, do ‘couples’ ever point out their weaknesses to one another?
The books advise you to tell each other what you want in the bedroom, the stoking of another type of fire. That’s easier said than done. Preach. Preaching. Preacher.
That fire died in her long ago, but it wasn’t through lack of sexual prowess. In the moments when they have managed to come together there has never been a lack of passion. Passion only begins to die when other commitments come between them. Less financially successful couples seem to be happier than they are now.
She watches her neighbours, family, and friends – vague attempts to perform a mental dissection of how their lives differ. She stands on the outside, the threshold of their joy, and wonders if they have ever been that happy? Have the good times simply been a product of her imagination?
She feels as though she is the ‘other’ woman. She might as well be… staring at the clock, watching, waiting…
Sharon Bidwell is a published author. You can drop by to say hi at ‘Aonia‘.
The Pygmy Giant 