Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood

    My hands were shaking, as if they weren't my own.

     I heard him speaking as I fidgeted with my lighter. I needed a cigarette, something to put in my mouth to keep me from screaming. My ears were pounding and his voice sounded like it came from underwater. A strangers voice, muffled by the sound of my own ears pounding.

     "Don't you know I'm only human?" His chin quivered like my father's did on my graduation day. It made me queasy all the same.

     I slapped him in my mind. I slapped him a thousand times. "Don't you know I am, too," I thought as I slapped him a thousand times more. I bit my lip as a phantom burn trickled through my fingers until I had to glance at them to make sure I hadn't lit myself on fire with my cheap drug store lighter.

     I searched my pockets for my Marlboro's. Salvation was one drag away. I didn't look at his face as I searched the counter tops, searched through my purse, searched anywhere for that drag of salvation. I must have looked silly, shaking and searching, like that yellow cat we found at my mother's back door. 

     "Where are my fucking cigarettes!?" I screamed it. Or maybe I didn't. I'm not exactly sure if anything actually escaped from my lips, but my stomach was somersaulting like a rolling stone. I thought I was going to vomit, but I didn't.

     I can't remember if I cried. I know my face was hot and my breath felt like fire, but I can't remember if I was crying. He was. Like any child who got caught in a lie, he was crying. I finally looked at his face, well not at it, but through it. I could see the clock on the wall. 11:52. The second hand ticked on slowly as if it was falling asleep, as if it was no longer a clock but a memory of one.  My eyes locked onto it until I felt like I was sitting on that second hand, a tiny speck of dust going for a ride. I stayed there like that until it made full circle. 11:53.

     I blinked.

     "It was only once," the muffled voice whispered with a new kind of clarity. There was no more pounding, his voice was no longer that of an underwater stranger. The clock disappeared and I was staring at his lips. His lips, those lips that somehow seemed different now. Uglier. Those words did not suit him. They bruised him, chapped him, slapped him until he was uglier.

     "It meant nothing to me." I watched him say it in slow motion.

     I could feel my hand raise itself, ready to launch at his cheek, anything to reflect my pain. "This means nothing to me," I muttered with the voice of an underwater stranger, shivering like a yellow cat in the rain.

     My hand struck him like a rock. It shook, as if it weren't my own.