April Flash #10
based on prompts by:
Haredawg: Hey man, this is Babylon
Amygdala: things went smash; undeserved benevolence; jellybean tomatoes; trouble, cant you see? A moth fell from the wall; one is bigger than the other
Things went smash that year, a table crashing, knocking over a lamp, the pictures tumbling from the wall with the slamming of the door, books falling of the shelf, a moth fell from the wall onto the floor where it was set upon by huntress-felines. I went a little nuts. That was an understatement. I used to scream at you amid the upset of upended furniture, uprooted sapling trees. this is trouble, cant you see? but still, through it all, through my meltdowns and meltups, through my despairs and delights, you stared at me with an undeserved benevolence, righting the tables, supergluing the lamps, sweeping up the mess and vacuuming the carpet. I didnt deserve you, after so many years of tolerance, I had finally jumped the gorge and slipped into the feet of some sort of monster. But your patience seemed without end. Patience, vs kindness one is always bigger than the other, and I was pushing you to your limits, testing the waters for weakness and finding no cracks in your resilience. There were times my fists beat against your chest, when my head found the curl of your shoulder and neck and made a home, tears trickling down your tshirt and under the skin beneath. It traced lines made by the dirt of your constant gardening. The garden was your retreat from my madness, I think. It etched sun wrinkles around your dancing eyes, made freckles appear on the bridge of your nose, left a smile curled in the corners of your mouth. I hated it. You were proud of your growing jellybean tomatoes, trying to add them into any salad I made, carefully removing the seeds. Id laugh at them, saying they werent big enough to eat. You assured me they were, that they were ripe and ready that they were tired of waiting. Perhaps that was your warning sign.
One night, after a bitter sleep which left me cold, I reached for your side of the bed to find it empty. Strange, I thought. When I tumbled out of bed a few hours later, I found your clothes gone from the closet. Stranger. Your books were missing off the shelves. Your dvds gone you had left a few of my old favorites on the bottom shelf of vacancy. You always were thoughtful like that. I put a robe on over my pajamas and made it out to the backyard your garden was uprooted. It looked like a tornado had made its way through our small alley, avoiding the house with the sleeping giant within but taking the fruits of your labor. All except one. You left the vine of tomatoes, now ping-pong ball sized, grown up from jellybeans. Attached, a note left in your careful hand. thought you might grow to appreciate them, like they grew, someday
Everyone has a breaking point. And I had gone a bit crazy, that year. But hey, man this is Babylon you played the piper to my tune too long.
new prompts: eagle rock; birth and spring; vibrant becoming