Vegetable

She is angry today.
He is sad.

She lays in the bed, but she doesn't sleep this morning. She doesn't say a word to him. He presses his hands against his face with a long sigh as he leans on the bed. His hair is unwashed and his eyes are sunken and gray like the side of an orange that had been left for too long to decay.

"Talk to me, baby," he pleads.

She angrily ignores him because she can't see past herself at this moment.

He holds her hand against her will. His touch is both warm and unsettling and her humanity seems only to dangle by it.

"I'm so sorry. Please, baby, look at me," he whimpers. He is sobbing now.

She stares at the ceiling as her heart aches beneath its darkness. To her left are shadows. To her right, just his voice and touch. She knows where she is. She just can't see it and she is angry. She is crying without tears. She can't breath, but her lungs fill with air. The air she exhausts gives no relief.

"I never meant to hurt you," he says to comfort her. He doesn't comfort himself.

He can feel her heart beat. He can hear her heartbeat. He can see her heartbeat. She is nervous, anxious like their first date twelve years ago, beating rapidly like the moment they found their first kiss between words and thoughts that said so little then. Her heart said everything.

She doesn't respond to him, but he knows she hates him. She just can't let go, so he holds on tightly, wishing to melt the cold expression of her face. But, she gives him nothing.

He presses his face deep into her bosom as if to burrow into her soul and coax her back into the light. She hears his murmured cries, but he can only hear the slowing beat of her heart, feel the rise and fall of her chest, and the ever fading warmth of her body.

"Please...please...please..,"he speaks in futility as he drifts off into his dreams.

She can feel his hot breath pouring through the covers. His moist air pushing against her skin like invisible lips kissing her. The tiny hairs on her skin rise. The smell of his hair--his smell--reminds her of every moment they ever spent lazily in their bed quietly in love. She has a secret to tell him, but she won't.

She is too tired now, too tired to be angry. She wants to sleep, but for how long? She wants to tell him, but she can't. She drifts off slowly as he sleeps by her side. Like those long Sunday mornings buried in the warm covers and tangled in each other's touch, she sleeps...wishing she could tell him.