qarrtsiluni

by Tamuira Reid

I stopped caring about you sometime between January and May, when the weather changed and the leaves came back. You went on that big white pill and couldn’t have aged cheese or avocado and I sat at the table in the kitchen, watching you watch me.

We tried to drive the crazy away but it had us by the throat, slept where we slept. The yelling wouldn’t stop until you’d had enough, when your eyes no longer felt right in your head and you’d rather lie down than stand there, fist in your mouth, the cat rubbing against your leg.

You once told me that depression comes in waves but that makes it sound too beautiful. There was nothing good about the bad.

Impossible, I always tell them, to pinpoint when it started, when words went from breathy whispers to knives hurled at one another across a dark space.

Sometimes we’d try to fight it before it hit. You’d take a shower. Shave your face. Vacuum the hallway rug. It never worked and the top would blow off and it would be me and you again, just like that.

Teacups shook in their skin, books fell over on themselves and I wanted to see how it would all play out. Would he get the girl in the end? Or does she leave during a quiet moment, smiling as she turns away. His hand pressing against her back like an ear.

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Tamuira Reid is a writer and educator currently living in Florence, Italy. Since receiving her MFA from Sarah Lawrence College in 2003, she has been teaching in both traditional and non-traditional classrooms, from India to a state penitentiary and now full time at NYU. Her first feature-length screenplay, Luna’s Highway, is currently in pre-production and earned her a finalist position in the 2009 American Zoetrope Screenwriting Contest and a 2010 semifinals finish in The Nicholls Fellowship Competition, sponsored by The Academy of Moving Pictures.