by Susan Fuchtman
The water pouring from my kitchen faucet into the stainless-steel sink sounds like a drumroll. The sound gives me butterflies, just the tiniest hint. It takes some time for the water to heat up, and the drumroll continues.
Our breakfast had seemed ordinary. Eggs—we both like them scrambled. Toast with butter and locally sourced honey. Coffee—sugared for him, black for me. We ate in what I’d always thought of as companionable silence. After all this time, there isn’t much to discover. When we do talk, we ask how the other slept, coordinate our schedules, reveal our latest malady and the date for our next doctor’s appointment.
But today, after he put his plate next to the sink, he came back to his chair. I had an inch of coffee left, so I was still sitting. I looked up. His forearms rested on the table, hands folded. He said, “We need to talk.” He’s been unhappy, he said. His mouth kept moving but my head was filled with a sound like a train coming into a station, squeals and brakes and rumbling. After a while, he patted my hand and walked out of the room. As I watched him lumber away, the noise in my head diminished. I thought, “I can finally get a little dog. A Shih Tzu? Maybe a Dachshund.”
I picked up my dishes and circled ‘round to the sink to warm up the water.
Susan Fuchtman writes poetry and short fiction. She lives in Iowa City, Iowa where she is a volunteer and board member for PorchLight Literary Organization, a non-profit which helps writers grow their practice and find creative community. Her recent work can be found in Moon City Review, South Florida Poetry Review, Flash Flood, and elsewhere.
Feature image Alicia Christin Gerald on Unsplash
