A Collection of Short Stories and Poems

You Stopped Loving Us

Prompt two: My mother left my father again today, and I thought I would write about it.

July 3. That's when you came back from Arizona. Your skin was a beautiful caramel brown instead of the creamy ivory that once matched mine back in September of last year. Your elbow was broken and it hung in a gray sling then. It'd been just shy of a year since I heard anything from you.

I remember the day you left us, the day there was hardly even a goodbye to echo the hello you yelled to me from the end of our street. You waved with your right hand while your left hand clutched the suitcase. Your wedding ring was missing from your ring finger, and your finger looked naked. Why was she so happy?

Why was it so warm on that day? It was supposed to be Autumn. The sky was supposed to be the gray colour of prison walls because of how trapped and abandoned I felt. Fat thunder clouds were supposed to weep as the kids at school remarked "this is so like Oregon". They were not supposed to be happy clouds, they were not supposed to look like cotton balls jumbled together or like a handful of snow that the pink fingers of a child held. They were not supposed to be chasing the sun's golden-laced rays like a litter of kittens playing with each other on their stubby legs for the first time or dancing in the sweet fragrance of orange-splattered leaves. You were not supposed to leave while I was rushing home from school to have lunch. None of this was supposed to happen.

Why did you leave him? How could you leave my father? Didn't you love him? Weren't you holding hands and kissing each other's cheeks as I jokingly threw in an "eww" only yesterday? Could you even understand how broken he was before you returned? Did you stop loving him? Us? My brothers, Joshua and Ethen? Me? Egory? I thought marriage and children meant forever.

But now, today is August 13. It's 97 degrees Fahrenheit in Oregon right now, and the sky is the purest of baby blue that the clouds wouldn't dare bother its beauty. The magenta kissed roses outside my bedroom window are wilting because of the heat and humidity stabbing their coarse petals, and the once vibrant green that painted the grass in the fenced off front yard has dried to a straw-like tan; it's just like the colour of your skin when you came back.

There's even a festival celebrating this town's Scandinavian heritage in the centre of it, just behind the office I work in. And you're waving goodbye again from the inside of a small maroon Toyota Rav chofered by my father. You smiled while I held the baggie of cookies we made just yesterday. They weren't perfect, but it was the first time I could bring myself to cook with you again since you left for the first time. They weren't beautiful, but God did they taste wonderful again. Father loved them more than anyone because we were finally inching towards becoming normal again, like nothing happened. Our normal family.

Joshua and Ethen didn't mind your waving and smiling like I did. In fact, they waved back with their own smiles and good wishes for your flight to Canada I learned about just as you were leaving. I said nothing and did nothing. I just stared at you while you hugged my brothers from the rolled down window of the car. Your chestnut hair was pulled to the back of your head and held with a hair tie while your glasses were pushed to the top of your head so your chocolate eyes shimmered in the sunlight.

You took my hand in yours and looked me in the eyes, moving the part of my bangs that covered my left eye that you always joked with me about getting too long. The cookies fell to the dying grass like you didn't even care and told me to watch over and take care of the boys while Father stared at me from the driver's side with a stony looking pain in his eyes. His look seemed to matched the sharp feeling in my chest as I nodded the headache into my brain.

The house feels like an oven now even with the air conditioner on high, and it smells slightly of Egory's litter box that I just cleaned. The cookies tasted bland again, so I threw them away. Your suitcase that sat behind my spot on the couch for an entire month is missing, and your stack of paper cups that held your favourite soda-pop no longer lounged on the coaster under the lamp. Your seat beside me is as cold as the pain on my father's face, but at least Joshua and Ethen are smiling at the television show playing on the screen.

Today doesn't feel real, and my headache is hurting me even more now.

Today, you left without telling me and told me to do what I was already doing.

Today, you made me think you stopped loving us all over again.

~So, but my mother left me today and I was feeling a bit overwhelmed with everything. My writing is not the best right now,  but I still hope you enjoyed. And, as always with my works, this is unedited, so commenting wonky sentences is always helpful.~