Failure

The slump of his shoulders screams defeat. His stride to the bed is heavy, like those of a soldier returning from a bad battle. He’s gone; the loft lights aren’t the only ones out tonight.

He crawls into the cocoon of your duvet and immediately turns his back. You caress his arm like it’s a precious work of art you’ll never see again. You can’t see his face, but you know what’s there: tears welling but refusing to fall. You can hear the suppressed sniffles of a man trying to hold it together, and the telltale crackle of a heart breaking…or is that you?

Did your so-called friends’ predictions finally come true? Did you finally break him? You feel the defeat in every pore as it absorbs his own. You failed. Would three little words have made that much of a difference? They clearly don’t – he’s here after you assumed he’d choose the fiddler. Then it hits you – this is a losing victory. His entry was not that of a victor, but of someone out of options. His choice did not choose him.

His sniffles play a plaintive lullaby as you drift off to sleep, wondering how best to recover.

Return to Mothafunkybat