Living In Sin

We are all living in sin according to this door drop. I imagine mine is an orange tinged creamy sauce of a sin. Yours would originate from the same impulse but be more grown-up and solid like a chocolate fondant. I'm being silly because not all sin is delicious. Dictators must have sins like cowpats - ruining their palaces, littering their green lands with brown dollops.

You and I made some of our sin together. We chucked it in the mixing bowl of life. To marry or not, to sleep together, to have a child outside the magic fence of wedlock. Didn’t think twice about it, did we? Well just that once when we ran out of cutlery because the dishwasher was broken. Thought it might have been nice to get friends and family to cough up for our eternal happiness and crockery cleaning. Fun to fill my remaining credit card capacity with a posh frock.

Neither of us was bothered enough to book anything. I could see the idea flip in and straight out of your mind like a spawning salmon. I knew your little sins – the careless greed, sly selfishness, mundane meanness – but they were sparrow sins. Now you avert your eyes from mine as if you don’t want me to see into your soul. What’s hiding there? A vulture of a sin, hooded and dark waiting to prey on something that you’ve killed?

Suddenly I wish we had married. I wish there was some logistic barrier to you moving on from me. All I have is shared possessions that would be surprisingly easy to split. I bring you the post and stand like a supplicant on your favourite rug. You’re looking directly at me for the first time in months. You’re wearing some of the new clothes you bought yourself because you fancied a change. How much of a change did you fancy?

Your mouth is open but you make no sound as if someone has stolen the words from you. Don’t say it. You look down at the rug and back to my face again. I sense you prepare yourself to pull the rug from under me. I can hear your thoughts as clearly as I used to and the symbolism is too much to bear. Your head is alight with sin, your eyes blazing as your hands reach for my throat. You run your finger down the softest part of my neck then stare as if you’ve never seen me before.

I step back, away from your grasp. I look inside your mind and it’s a strange land, somewhere I’d never been before. The man in front of me is a stranger. You only ever existed in my head. All the things I’d ignored about you tumble on top of each other like giant bricks falling. Never sharing a bank account. How you couldn’t clean toilets because it made you feel sick. How you pointed and picked at your own faults in our children. How you were blind to their strengths. You knew my strength though, you've been focused on reducing it for years.

I watch you close your mouth and I know what's coming next. A verbal attack, finding fault with my uncertainty. How I change my mind every ten seconds. How it's impossible to relax with someone who's so nervous - have I never thought about its impact on you?

‘I want a divorce.’ I say, shocking myself with words I never expected to come from my lips. Your missing words have found a truer home in my mouth. They belong to me so I don’t have to add stealing to my long lists of sins.