qreative writing

**Just started writing when I sat in front of my computer and this fictional chapter? story? collection of words was the result. Enjoy.**

I stared at my hands. I didn’t recognize them. They seemed like someone else’s. Has my age finally decided to stake its claim, I contemplated. I began to feel my claustrophobia set in. Has this room always been this small? And does he have to take up the whole bed? I mean it is my bed. Shit. And he ain’t that big. Fine, he is…but I mean damn.

I rolled toward my edge of the bed and wondered how and when I went from owning a lovely queen-sized bed with 600-count Egyptian sheets and a silk-cotton duvet to owning… an edge. My feet searched my bedroom’s wood floor for the comfort of my worn-in slippers as I sat up. At least those were still mine. As they slid into the lamb’s wool, my feet settled into the molding they’d created and I reveled in the familiar shape. It’s all I had left to hold on to. The molding I’d created on my W Hotel mattress, that had taken two years to get just right, was long gone. The dip formed by allongé arms and arabesque legs had been distorted beyond recognition by box-out shoulders and jumpshot knees. Ugh.

I pulled on my robe and heard him turn over and grunt something. I’d learn to ignore the unconscious ramblings. How did I not know he talked in his sleep before I accepted his proposal? That, for sure, would’ve been a deal breaker. I only half listen to him when he’s awake; now, I have to ignore him while he’s sleep too?

I got up and heard myself shuffling to the bathroom. It somehow reminded me of my nana. She used to shuffle everywhere. Hell no. Not yet. I ain’t that old. I consciously picked up my feet as I traveled toward the light at the end of the hall. He’d left the light on again…all night. “Oh please believe he will be paying that bill,” I thought out loud, with half a mind to go back to the bedroom just to smack him in the back of his head. I took another step into the bathroom and almost lost my life as I tripped over a pair of Nike Uptowns and slid on the cover of a Men’s Health magazine. I caught the sink with a spastic grab right before my head hit the tub. “Motherfu-ugh!” I took a moment to gather myself before slowly sitting on its edge.

As I sat on the cold porcelain and let my heart fall back down my throat I surveyed my bathroom. Shoelaces dangled on the doorknob and a toothbrush laid by the sneakers that had very nearly ended me. Cleaning his precious kicks and simultaneously soiling my life. Isn’t it ironic. I had learned how to deal with the occasional pair of dirty drawers and the way he never ever neverevernever remembered to close the Gillette shaving cream that always seemed to foam all over my counter on its own. But what finally caught and held my darting gaze was completely unforgiveable.

I sprung from where I sat and damn near ran back to my bedroom. In seconds, I was on “his side” of MY bed with his Men’s Health rolled up tight in my hand. All reason had escaped me and had been quickly replaced with a resolved anger.

WHAP!

He jumped out of his slumber in response to the magazine smacking him on the back of his freshly lined caesar haircut.

“Woman, have you lost your mind?!”

WHAP!WHAP!WHAP!

It was as if my hands really weren’t mine; they had a mind of their own and they resented those jumpshot knees, at the moment, just as much as I did.

WHAP!

Legs, arms, broad back, butt–wherever I could reach I went to smacking.

“Are you crazy??! What is wrong with you??!!” he yelled trying to find the comforter to dull the hits that against his manly physique were mere nuisances.

“YOU! PEED! ON! THE! SEAT!” I yelled back between throwing licks. “AND! THE! GOT! DAMN! FLOOR! What are you an animal??!!”

“Am IIII the animal??” he yelled back. “Do you see yourself right now??”

I paused in an exhausted huff and quickly examined myself in the mirror. “What?!” I asked with the same intensity, though I knew I looked a hot mess: Curlers half in, half out, robe half on, half off. “Stop tryna change the damn subject,” I hissed. He wasn’t going to get off that easily. “Is this what it’s gonna be? Is this what I have to look forward to after the wedding?? Pissy toilet bowls and breaking my ribs tripping over your size-13s??

“Do you want me to leave?” he asked without budging. “Am I taking up too much space?”

“You’re 6′5″! Of course you’re taking up space!”

“It’s like that?” I could tell he was slightly offended but more than anything amused at how insane I looked.

“You rubbed out my molding! It took years to make that molding.” I cried, sounding more like a whiny 3-year-old than a grown woman who recently got engaged.

“Your what??”

“Nothing,” I muttered. I had lost my momentum and just wanted to lay back down now that I was going nowhere near that toilet to pee.

“What is this really about baby?”

He was up now and wanted to talk, as if I hadn’t heard enough of him talking all night in his sleep. I, on the other hand, was done talking. Besides, even though I was frustrated with his messiness and the infiltration of his manly things throughout my prissy lair, I knew that those things weren’t what it was really about. I didn’t want to talk about what it was really about.

“Nothing, just forget it. You wouldn’t understand,” I said with a finality.

“Well, maybe Terrence will,” he stabbed.

Every muscle in my body tensed at the name and I listened to him roll back over triumphantly.

Shit, I thought. Guess he’s not the only one who talks in his sleep.