Another glass of wine. This one goes down far easier than the first. The second even quicker. She's feeling all her years tonight wrapped up alone in her blanket, the suspension of her silence hanging heavy on the air.
Waiting, watching the clock and wondering if maybe there was some shift she forgot to notice. Some catalyst that toppled her over when she was distracted for a moment by something else.
She feels off tonight as if there's something not quite right, something not quite wrong. She closes her eyes, committing herself to focus on just breathing. A steady catch and release, in and out with no thought required.
No thought. That's important for her tonight. She doesn't want to think anymore than absolutely necessary. She doesn't want to interpret any of these actions as anything that might resemble a beginning of an ending, or an ending to something that never really was.
She doesn't even know if she knows what she's been doing. Whether it's wrong, or right, or something inevitable, something she could not have resisted had she tried. If I were a man stranded in the desert, she reasons to herself, no one would blame me for taking a sip when handed a glass of water.
She doesn't think that this is just an easy excuse for bad behavior. Black and white has a gray she says with some authority. You don't really know what you know until you know it. And even then, you know you knew it all along.
She smiles. Laughs at herself in the darkness, trying to ignore her own questions. Trying to ignore just how much she could use a comforting hug to chase away the cold that lingers on her skin like a dull and settled fog. But there are no hugs tonight, and she's trying not to dwell on the question that would ask why.
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