Catherine O’Brien
Untimed
t is the twenty-third part of the day. We have been here for a full hour.
“Any time you like”, that’s what some part of you has the gall to say. Your face is naturally compact and pensive.
In the spur of the moment, I lean across and pinch you to give a bad welcome to your horrible attitude.
“Patience is always rewarded,” you swat the air with a contrasting eye and I flinch because I’ve said things I shouldn’t say.
“How many times?” I ask through a veil of delicate, crepe-papery tears, not wanting to know while knowing that hope has been beached for a long time.
“Was it after the miscarriage?” I ask this while my fingers trace my lips searching for the hook caught there.
I drown myself in my misery; I’m a slow-moving river debouching into the sea.
“Is her light phosphorescent, does she surface feelings you’ve never felt with me?”
“Did you glut yourself with her?” I’m crying and you’re still large and unruffled and collecting my tears with the back of your hand. I’m flushed and my cheeks are burning like a telescope turned on a star.
I reach for you and feel your heart beating and know again the first streaks of dawn. I hear you stuffing the air with words that may or may not live to see their place in the sun.
When you leave, I lose myself in large, reflective surfaces. I contemplate the manslaughter of a mantelpiece; my mind allows me to swing a sledgehammer but in reality, I stand and prune myself to stimulate branching but there’s no growth without you.
Clouds now obscure your sun and our son. You’ve left him unfathered – a boy on an unmanned mission to manhood. He slams doors and shouts through me with a striking-red throat that he’s nothing like you. He is tired of you, me and the general bulk of humanity. He needs you but hasn’t been allowed to warm himself in your presence. “Any time you like” I type as you appear in gyrating dots on my cell phone and then disappear to create yourself another dispensable joy.
Catherine O’Brien
Catherine O’Brien is an Irish writer of poems, flash fiction and short stories. She holds an M.A. and a Ph.D. in English Literature. Her work has most recently appeared or is forthcoming in Comhar, Splonk, Fractured Literary, Flash Boulevard, The Gooseberry Pie Literary Magazine, Mythic Picnic, BULL, Firewords and Bending Genres. You can find out more about her and her work on X @abairrud2021.