Moth

Seeing you that day, well it was tough to say the least. It was so brief if it was anyone else I wouldn't have been able to tell. But I knew your face, i'd captured it, frozen in time the day you left. I never thought that i'd run into you again, not really. I always walked quickly past all the places we visited together, head down, phone out - hoping against hope that I wouldn't turn the corner and see your look of distaste looming towards me. Step, step, skip. Shuffling hastily to avoid the unavoidable.
New York seems to shrink when you're walking the same paths as someone you detest. The glowing scenery oozing apprehensive hate. You avoid certain places like they're hazardous  like they could maim you with their mere existence. It's as if you're entirely exposed, like your skin's inside out and infection is around every corner, or like you're walking on broken glass, tiptoeing over nails - skipping across a minefield. I just didn't want to see you - ever.
Then again a part of me wanted you to be there and part of me that knew you would be - that part of me hated you too. I'd imagined seeing you again a million times. I'd run over every way i'd hurt you, if I ever got the chance again. I'd tear you down and break you the way you'd broken me when you left.
I know i'm supposed to say something about how, since we'd been through so much, I should be harboring some kind of fragile love for you deep in the hidden valleys of my heart. But my heart is war-torn. It's abused. It's so far mangled I couldn't even find a space for myself in there, let alone you.
And when I saw you that day, whiskey in one hand, cig in the other - I knew nothing had changed. You're still just you. You're the same old broken man.
You said it was an accident, always an accident. But I knew what was really happening. She wasn't falling, she was being pushed. She wasn't clumsy, she was being hit. And you probably think I didn't hear you, shouting and screaming, bitter on your breath. Your serpent tongue snaking at her, breaking her almost as much as your fist. But I hid in my blanket of security, torn between the coward inside me, afraid of meeting the same fate, and the hero, clamoring to save her.
And one day I rose from my cocoon, my blanket fort haven, like a thick dark moth, a shiny armor of regret woven from all the screams i'd ignored and all the days driven to school by the woman next door because 'mummy can't get out of bed today'. No longer restrained by my footsie pajamas and my weak stature - I rose.
And I stood between the two of you and it was as if I was numb to you. Your words couldn't hurt me and I couldn't feel your rage. I'd been dormant long enough. And even as I lay crying and bleeding on the floor, blood spewing from my deformed mouth, I was happy to say - 'Fuck you, dad'
But now every day I listen to my crippled heart, hear it beating irregularly to everyone else's - it's weaker than theirs and it's hollow. I'm so afraid of it, scared one day all the hurt within it will burst out through my fingers, deform my hand into a fist - and i'll become you. I hear it like the sinister tick of a demonic clock, counting down the minutes till i break. I hear it in everything I do and it's coming closer. Pounding and pounding. Tick, tick, tock.  Avoiding the unavoidable.