This is what we do.

We throw sharp, capitalized, poison submerged sentences at one another’s face. I glue my hands to my water running, swollen red eyes

and you ragingly beat your arms on the wooden table that I desperately lean over, with the sound of colliding skin and cracking oak resonating our infected atmosphere.

We gasp for air between every holler and insult and disagreement

and point the broken finger at one another without a scent of validated reasons. We peel back and set fire to the softest parts of one another’s heart

until it’s nothing but a speck, barely beating and barely there.

We shove dreadful hate, pitiful sorrow, and handfuls of ticking bombs down one another’s throat, bracing ourselves for the explosion of guts, limbs and a dramatic blood bath.

You tower over my petite soul that’s cemented in a turtle like position and I glare with cherry red frustration, phantoms swarming my mind screaming in unison

how could you have let it all get this far.

The vase becomes your victim.

The chair becomes your victim.

The picture of my nostalgic liberated figure draped graciously over your brawny back, smiles gleaming becomes your victim.

My face, almost a few millimeters almost, becomes your victim.

Self-control reels you in like a trainer corralling and headstrong stallion. Feebleness disperses, exiting my body

as pity over your sudden hunched silent soul slithers in. One of us always gives in to the other.

One of us always retracts.

One of us always breaks through the smothering cloud of deep anger.

One of us always refuses to be the one to leave. We bicker; intensely, loudly, feverishly, dangerously bicker. And then it ends, with a reluctant but tremendously defeated and desperate sorry.

It’s what we do.