unbridled rage

And, a couple related things

I am full of unbridled rage. This is the sentence I keep speaking. Couldn’t bring myself to send a newsletter last week. I’m sure, given everything, you didn’t notice.

We’re at work on the Caregiving edition, with hopes to have final responses to submissions out by the end of the week.

Please be sure, if it wasn’t abundantly clear already: Talk Vomit does not suffer fascism. Talk Vomit believes in reproductive justice for all. Talk Vomit does not entertain the notion of a middle ground on either of these issues.

Appropriately, here is a short story entitled “Stalking Sabbath,” written by Sarina R Michel and published in our autumn edition, which you can also read here.

x,
Monica

By Sarina R Michel

Between headstones and flowering crepe myrtles, in the wet-night-heat of summer, stands a man. A mostly nice man. A sometimes funny man. He had a family. Two dogs. A 401k. He wasn’t supposed to be here. 

Tonight, after he tucked the kids into bed, he appealed to his wife for a moment to walk… To clear his head. She agrees. She is a good wife. Beautiful. Round from the children, but he finds the stretch marks entertaining–a bit of texture added to their marriage. 

He wandered down lamp-lit streets until coming to an old cemetery, which elbows up against the backyards of a few houses. 

He wasn’t looking for her, exactly, but the sheer white curtain over the sliding glass door does little to shield his view. There is the kitchen counter, a row of cabinets, a bookcase and a green velvet chair. A sliver of the kitchen, a snippet of the living room. Then a flicker. A bit of movement. 

She wears a grey silk robe, open over cropped pajamas. Cotton shorts. A camisole. Fluffy slippers. She walks to the bookshelf and presses her thumb to her lips as she reads through the titles, her head angled to the left. She selects a book, tucks it under her arm, and sets off to ignite the kettle, a blue light signaling the heat. From his spot in the yard, through the sheer curtain and the blackness of the night, he can see the water boiling. She reaches for a mug, stretching her arm just so, the silk robe falling to reveal her shoulder. In the kettle, bubbles form and rise, crest and break. The blue light flicks off. She rips open a bag of tea. Pours the water. Waits. 

While she waits, she tucks one ankle behind the other, leans her hip against the counter, and reads with her four left fingers pressed reverently to her lips.

It’s all so ordinary: a woman in her pajamas, waiting on tea to steep, skimming the words of some first chapter. Nothing a stranger couldn’t see standing in his own backyard, looking through the raised blinds at his own wife. 

This is the thing about women. It’s the wanting that makes them beautiful, and the having that makes them unbearably human. A girl can be anything to the wanting man. She could be reading his favorite novel. Drinking his favorite tea. Touching her lips and remembering the regular man that lives just across the cemetery. She could think of him as a man, not a father or a husband, but a man, only a man. 

She clutches the mug to her chest. Fingers splayed over the spine of the book. Her feet carry her to the green chair and slowly, tenderly, she lowers her body, tucking her legs beneath her, touching her lips to the mug. A long, smooth drag of liquid. The dip of her throat. 

He stays there, between the trees and buried bodies. And for the next half hour, she reads. She sips from her tea; she licks her thumb to turn each page, eyes growing more and more weary until she rises from her chair, sets the book on the shelf, and abandons her tea to the bare-black counter and the flickering of darkness. 

To have watched the inevitability of tomorrow settle onto her features; to have seen her close the book; it was unbearable. It was seeing a woman become human again, full of need and maintaining. She needs sleep. Needs to shower, to pee, to brush her teeth, to do all the other mind-numbing chores that must be done to stave off decay and atrophy of her body. She is just another person. 

He closes his eyes and breathes in the night. Dark air fills his lungs. In his blindness, he can smell the mosquitoes buzzing; feel the wings of the bats circling over headstones; taste the gaze of the owl, the bitterness of its judgment.

One more glance… if he could only take one more look at this woman… but he knows better. Knows to turn before his eyes blink open. To take one courageous step after the other through the evening dew. Towards a home he worked for. Taking off his shoes, brushing his teeth, climbing into his expensive bed. Towards good, married sex, a wife that loves every shameful shard of him. Towards three children that make the world a thing of beauty. Towards one more day lived, and one less day of living.

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Sarina R Michel writes about isolation, control, and religious manipulation –irreverently & somehow, delightfully. She daylights as a critic pursuing ruthless-positivity. Links to her previously published work can be found at sarinarmichel.com.