Any Second Now

What sudden clamor did arise?, I wondered as a relentless raucous yanked me from my slumber.

The icicles outside once plump, then sharp and pointy, and now falling to their broken backs and melting deaths outside my home…had a clump of snow slid from my roof unto the ground? No, that wasn’t it, I though as dishes shattered.

Someone was in my kitchen breaking whatever they pleased, it seemed–and my restful sleep also! I should run down stairs in a mad frenzy, feeling about the walls balancing my rage and wonder…allowing curiosity to echo in my empty belly of banality–how long had it been since the spell had been broken; my peace was sweet at first, and then a creeping moldy death brilliant in its lulling song, as I reclined daily, to the passing of my days.

My feet are cold and aching still. They will leave, surely they will be gone by the time I run into that room to behold shattered china, gleaming and beaming silverware with its sunlight patterns on my kitchen ceiling. The morning with its birds will seem forever horrible to find my enemy afoot and staring calmly and waiting for me to move an inch. Even now, at the thought, I dare not move. They will lose patience…they will regret the shameful act, criminal and petty that its, behold the holes in the walls they have caused and with long calm breaths, pacify themselves with a moment’s mundane thought: to turn away, to leave and turn away unregrettably. Nothing needs to happen, the anger is exorcised, the damage is done, shall there be more? The prisons are overcrowded, cold, and devoid of women…or men, depending on the prison, I suppose. What will you do there, my mysterious enemy? I shall give you a moment longer to ponder the penalty of such a petty blunder.

Any second now the door will open, and he…or she, will walk out, and if a paragon of etiquette, will close the door behind them.

I will lay here under my blankets for a few seconds longer. To avoid my end, to avoid the cold steel of an unforgiving knife, to neglect the pounding fists of a madman with nothing to lose, the clawing nails of a woman scorned…

Any second now…

 

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