Méfiance

This isn’t the first time she has had to tell you this, but maybe you didn’t take her seriously on all those other occasions because she was looking at you only from the corner of her eye. That time the light was streaming through the blinds so perfectly and she had an idea that just could not wait, she was only half with you while her other half was busy trying to describe everyday phenomena in a way that you could never imagine. The next day you would look out of the window and say: “It’s funny, the sunlight looks a little brighter today.” She was only half warning, and the other half was fooling you into thinking that she was trying to be intense just to be interesting, to find ways for your lives to mimic her art, to make the air vibrate on still afternoons when it seemed like nothing important would ever happen in your small corner of the universe.

I hope this time you will listen when I say:

 This woman is a situation in which you do not wish to find yourself. She will dig to the bottom of your words –choose wisely– and will conjure up a storm around the fact that you called her by her government name instead of after your favorite flavor of ice cream. She will make sure minor disagreements turn into tragedies and temporary difficulties become epic tales of adversity from which you have no chance of escaping. You will look back on phone calls drenched in tears and wonder what you could have said or done to avoid the conversation ending in ultimatums and apologies you did not mean.

This woman is greedy. She has sensed the wealth of love you have hidden behind your sarcasm and will pick away at it tirelessly, using the lethal edge of her persistence as an axe. You do not stand a chance. You will emerge from any encounter with her standing alone on the pavement outside an apartment building you do not recognize, blinking in the sun’s unnecessary brilliance, your palm outstretched and empty, lined with faint scratches and cuts with your own blood threatening to rise to the surface.

This woman does not need you. You have planted yourself defiantly by her side, resolved to allow her to use your shoulder as a headrest. You will regret this soon enough. The moment she begins to feel that you have made yourself indispensable, that you have conquered a patch of land in the barren plains of her spirit and tried to nurture greenery, she will turn against you. You will not understand. You have only been half listening while the other half of you was trying to support the very thing that would destroy you. You have trained your own killer.

I have danger straining to escape from behind my perfectly clenched teeth. Beware.