june 2021

The days are fine until they’re not. Bad days go like this: I wake at 3 in the morning and have coffee, read the news, work out in the garage. I’d rather sleep in, but this is the only time I have alone. He wakes and showers around 8. By then I’ve been working for hours at a standing desk I’ve fashioned out of a tv tray and a dresser. He attends meetings at the dining room table. He doesn’t work as many hours as me. He makes twice the money and works half as hard. At three, he pours his first drink. He cooks dinner, we eat. After dinner, I do the dishes while he watches TV and drinks in his recliner. We engage in light conversation, nothing serious. After 7 or 8 p.m., he gets angry. Out of nowhere. He starts to yell. He is very drunk now. He slurs and shuffles around the kitchen, laying out his grievances. He bangs pots and pans around. The dog gets scared and scratches on my bedroom door trying to hide, ears back. Occasionally he’ll throw something across the kitchen, but he never hits me. Even drunk, he knows better. If he hits me, I’m gone, covid be damned. I retreat to the bedroom with the dog, eyes wide, mouth shut. Waiting for him to wear himself out, to pass out in the basement. We haven’t slept in the same bed for months. I was going to leave in June of 2020. Then covid nearly bankrupted us. I’m saving money again. Now I’m waiting until June of 2021. It feels so far away. This isn’t a marriage. I’m not a wife, I’m a hostage.