Flayed by Steve Gerson, a fizzing can of shaken cola

"I'm tired of it," she said, her voice stressed, sounding like teeth-ground TMJ.

"What?" I asked with typical ignorance.

"What? Like you don't know? Like I haven't told you a thousand times? You keep doing it. You continue to do it. When we're out with friends. When we're with the family. Even if we're alone in a car," her voice becoming more exasperated, her face reddening like the top of a thermometer ready for liftoff.

Still I sat stupidly.

"You interrupt me when I'm speaking as if my words are weeds and you're clearing the garden to plant your own thoughts. You talk over me, trampling my words with your size ten feet as if my words are ants and you're the exterminator.

"I'll be trying to contribute to the conversation and you'll pry yourself in with a crowbar and change the topic, as if my words are irrelevant or worse a nuisance," she said, sipping on chamomile tea to soothe her frayed nerves.

"Even when we're alone and I'm talking to you, your eyes are dazed with distractions. Your brain is fizzing like a can of shaken Coke, your focus elsewhere, anywhere but on my words.

"To you, I'm a willow and you're a wood-chipper, making me feel like a weak woman when you know my strength, when you've witnessed my courage when faced with illness or employment or life’s challenges. It's the disrespect that hurts me, flaying me like a peach quartered by a paring knife, the pit, my heart, thrown into the refuse bin," she cried, mascara running down her left cheek in a single exclamation point.

"What can I do?" I asked.

"Stop treating me like I'm not your equal, like I'm disposable. Stop . . ."

My smartphone started ringing. I interrupted her, held up one finger, and said, "Hold that thought. I've got to get this."

About the author 

Steve Gerson writes poetry and flash about life's dissonance. He has published in many journals plus his eight chapbooks: Once Planed Straight; Viral; And the Land Dreams Darkly; The 13th Floor; What Is Isn’t; There Is a Season; Have Not; and Who Am I Today. 

Did you enjoy the story? Would you like to shout us a coffee? Half of what you pay goes to the writers and half towards supporting the project (web site maintenance, preparing the next Best of book etc.)