Entwined By Haimanot Haile
It had happened again and she lay on the ground with blood racing down her face. She raised herself with much effort and leaned on the nearest wall. She heard him leave as the door slammed behind him, it had happened to many times before now, for her to cry as the pain had become her constant; after getting a moment of gathering her strength she got up and dragged her body to the refrigerator and took out the ice box and emptied it on a peace of cloth she had grabbed on her way there. She bunched up the cloth and rested it slowly on her face where it hurt the most. For the slightest of moments she closed her eyes and allowed herself to feel the pain, all of it and her free hand made a fist so intense that her own nails dug into her palm and she began to bleed and her blood graced the floor once again, she could breathe again.
The Sound of a passing train awoke her and she headed to the mirror in the bathroom. She put down the ice and leaned forward on the sink with both her hands with her head bowed down. She watched the blood from her self inflected wound weave down to the drain and disappear. Than she looked up at her face, she did not recognize herself. She raised her bloody palm and stroked her reflection following the line of her face ‘who are you?’ she returned her arm to the sink and her face expression completely changed as though she had realized something deadly. She opened the medicine cabinet and took out a small tinted glass bottle and she spilt its contents into the sink and watched it mix with her blood.
All night she lay in bed awake with thoughts running through her mind but all that came from her lips where the words ‘enough’ and after a moments breath she would say ‘but I love him’. All night she swayed and turned but all night those words were the only things she spoke. Her name was Trisha Anderson. Trisha finally gave up trying to fall asleep at about five o’clock in the morning so she opened her eyes. Stefan was watching her pathetic attempt to get up. She knew what he was going to say, what he always said, ‘I am sorry, I will never do it again, please, forgive me, I love you’ and sure enough those where the words that came from his lips.
One peaceful fraction of a night in a season of chaos had saved her love for him however much less had saved it before and his fear of being alone was not realized. With no sense of regret of what they had done they fell asleep next to each other. He woke up early that morning and went to work after a gentle kiss on her forehead. She smiled and that once warm loving smile was now just an empty copy of what it used to be, one that could not maintain itself once he had left.
He left with only passion on his mind. He thought ‘I love her; I always have even before I met her’ over and over again then he said out loud in the elevator alone ‘she is not perfect but I will make her’
She went to work. The job was perfectly designed not to show her face so she would not have to explain. She was the voice behind the statue in the drive in taking orders. Trisha had no friends and no family. She had been the only one she had for many years. She had adapted. Sitting on her chair in front of her desk with the microphone adjusted in front of her mouth, she thought what a perfect metaphor. She was the voice behind a fake, a mask and every time she met new person she always had the same front a happy face an voice ‘good morning, may I take your order’ and she is always gave and gave and it always seemed she received put it never was fair. Every day, she worked all day and went home although it didn’t seem like home at all. The city’s noises and the people passing by only deepened her feeling of seclusion. She stopped in the middle of walking back and she just knew it was no longer worth it, she had been rethinking her life however now she was sure. She really had nothing else to lose, he had taken it all. The poison had not worked; she could not watch him die slowly. And worst of all she could not do it, she could not kill him; she loved him too much to do it her self. And that was that the decision was made and no one could change her mind.
