Jargon. by Julia

“Well, I don’t know.”

“Where do you go?”

“You go back to the clouds you came from.”

“Do you get to touch the clouds?”

“Yes.”

“And are you dead forever?”

“Yes, but maybe you come back as something else, like an animal.”

“Like a dinosaur?”

“No, darling, dinosaurs are extinct.”

“What about a butterfly?”

“Yes, you could come back as a butterfly.”

“Would I remember being me?”

“I don’t think so, sweetheart.”

“Then how would I know it was me?”

That’s what he said when he walked in this evening. I was wearing a top with stripes.

“Mum said I looked glamorous,” I replied.

Her words felt like sunlight.

I’ve been living in this house for a long time now. Long enough that I’ve started to forget what it feels like to walk into a room without bracing myself. Long enough that compliments sound foreign, like a language I used to speak but can no longer quite remember.

The hardest part isn’t even about me anymore. It’s watching my daughters’ faces when words land wrong. Seeing them hurt by someone who should be their safe place.

They deserve to grow up knowing that love is gentle. Just like I did. I deserve to remember what that feels like too.

He walked in and went straight to the bedroom to change, barely registering the music or me swaying with the girls. When he came back out, his face had that particular flatness that comes from being peopled-out.

“I’ve been in a loud restaurant all day,” he said, opening the fridge and staring into it like it might contain answers.

I nodded, my whole body wilting. Later, in the one-second toilet break I allowed myself between stirring and serving, I saw it - my thumb, a clean line of red across the pad. I wrapped toilet paper around it and went back out.

He would never notice.

He did ask some questions about the day after that, strained, distracted. How was your afternoon? How was your mum? The words were there but he wasn’t, not really. His eyes drifted to his phone between my answers. Irritated, distant.

I kept the cut to myself, like the cut on my heart.