The Alphabet of a Marriage

...and that’s when she told me our marriage was over. Belated she said, like the anniversary and birthday cards I forget to send. Chaos, only chaos, will come from this I replied, begged, desperate for her to rethink, give me a second chance, and explain how I would change and make it up to our family. Forgiveness is never something I’ve been good at though, guessing she’d herself see the irony of my request. Hands trembling, palms sweating, I reached out for her, icy fear running through my veins despite the palpable heat on my skin. Just then I heard the twist of the living room door handle and, knowing that they would be expecting hugs upon my return from work, I left this moment of sorrow, this surreal wakeup call, and focussed on memories of us, dotted throughout my mind from the years before. Now I tried to tie them together, connect the dots, open again what I had ignorantly closed, losing sight of what mattered: people and places, husband and wife, children and homes, not queries from work and emails at night, functions and dinner suits. Reality continued to seep into these images I now conjured: sights of his birth marred by evenings at the office; tinsel and baubles around Christmas trees papered with bills and reports; university steps where I first saw her replaced with artificial screens flashing. Vows echoed in my mind now; nuptial promises ricohetting questions, asking what had I been doing these past few years? Where had I gone? X-rays of our marriage revealed splintered bones. A spine fractured. You can’t tell them anything yet, I pleaded, let’s just talk this through. Zenith like, my future hung above me, wavering and fragile.