Continuance from July 28...

" No lights are on in the house when I get home--save the little floodlight that often needs replacing outside. That and the ever present Christmas lights coiling down the stairway into the den.
I can't stand you today. It's nothing you've done or not done or said or failed to admit. It's just you. I'm beginning to understand why men don't understand women if we don't even understand ourselves.
Lately I stand outside our little red door and stare at the knocker-wondering if my grandpa's face will suddenly emerge from the tarnished handle like Jacob Marley--leaving me scared shitless. I leave my hand on the door wanting to turn and run and buy a pack of Marlboro lights and smoke two and a half while walking around our uneven streets--throwing the smoldering butts into pretentious gardens. I blow the smoke up so that i can walk through it because i love going to sleep with a cold head of hair latticed with cigarettes. that and i know you hate it. at least i won't be the one to wash the sheets this week.
i stand here at our little red door musing on all these possibilities, peel a little chip of paint off an indented panel and wonder if i'm the type of woman a man would cheat on. Not with- but on. it's morbid and ridiculous i know, but sometimes i stand here--knowing that you're upstairs in bed, smelling your stale unshowered smell, mixed with hastily-applied aftershave and downy--one sock still on your foot, the other barely hanging on like the socks of babies who kick them off until the ridiculously useless pieces of fabric trip and flop beneath their clumsy feet. i know where you are--where you always are-curled up next to petey with his soft shedding fur and rampant breathing. i know this--but sometimes i just--i just.
i need to stop.
you left the light on for me. i'll walk up our creaky stairs and fumble my way past door frames and bedside tables and the cat beneath my blind feet. you're still here, your sock foot dangling over the side of the bed and the sheets awry from your fruitless attempts to kick petey out. you roll over and kiss me goodnight.
you didn't brush your teeth--i can taste the banana bread i made on your lips.
you smell like marlboro cigarettes--the red ones. i guess no one will be changing these sheets tomorrow."