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An all too familiar melody chimes into the curved flesh and cartilage on both sides of my head. Indispensable flesh that provided comfort and torture fused into one. To most they were referred to as ears.

Today the choice that my ears have chosen for me was like most days.

As the rain lightly tapped on my blacked window and the thunder seemed like a monstrous cry. Above the din from the window at a right angle to me, the all too familiar sound again. The whimper and anguished cry, of something being lost or beginning to lose. On nights like these, I’d pretend I’d shuffle quickly into my room and make myself scarce. On nights like these where my hand are bound by invisible ropes, I’d love you.

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Sitting among what seem to be charred fields, she was adorned. She felt adorned. Honored and privileged to see their disfigurement and wounds, in contrary to hers. She started running her little greedy hands on their split skin on their backs, bones that surfaced and round scars from branding. On their faces a slight grin, then from the back a sharp pain stung her lower neck.

She awoke at night fall, she became fitting to be part of the “charred fields”.

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Upright, he held her close. She did not, her hands lay limp by her side. He parted from her she still did not move. She swayed lightly in the breeze. If she could feel, I’d guess she’d be piercing numb. If she could speak, I’d know she’d cuss. He still pondered why she didn’t reciprocate; at least she was here though in front of me, with me. Not standing, but hung. He smiled and held her close again.

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The white washed walls reverberated her every word, amplified every emotion. Slumped against the wall, she knelt on the white tiled floor underneath her. Her face gaunt, attenuated from the turmoil. She wanted her babies back.

That night, bravely yet cautiously she lifted up an ornamental dirk from the side table in the living room. In the house she used to live in, she felt abhorred. In the bed, he looked passive. The irony and contradiction she thought, for when he was awake he was nothing close to it. She giggled to herself. A smile she had rarely broken into.

The pool looked almost placid at her feet, growing wider, coagulating. You couldn’t tell the difference between the ash red Turkish carpet and the pool after awhile. No dry cleaning, she smiled again to herself.

She sneaked up to the next bedroom; put her hands on the bed sheet, “wake up baby, time to go” she whispered to the child. The child smiled. Caressing and pushing back the child’s hair, red lights flashed across her face and a not too distant wailing traveled into the child’s room.

“Mommie will be right back baby”

She picked up the dirk that was on the floor.

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