Lemons
Elizabeth Ellen

You come home from work to find your husband on his knees, a televangelist on the screen before him, the knife you used to cut your wedding cake at his wrist. Odd, you think then lock yourself in the bathroom with a magazine and the cookie sheet you keep under the couch. Proceed as normal, your thoughts caution as you strike a match against your heel. Remember the one about the guy who ate so much acid he thought he was an orange? When you said I do you never bargained you'd end up eating citrus fruit for dinner. You should have demanded a prenup.
When life hands you lemons, spit the seeds into oncoming traffic. You read that once on the inside of a matchbox in ____, South Dakota. This was on your honeymoon, before the incident with the anesthesiologist. Your husband ran barefoot through fields of sunflowers every time you stopped to take a piss. You came to despise the color yellow. It burned a hole through the rearview mirror. You kept your gaze straight ahead.
In the morning an impatient woman will ask your husband his religion and he'll tell her to go to hell. For this he will be given a room without a view. She will fail to see the humor in his delivery. She will choose to focus on the words instead. Taken out of context, you'll say but she'll turn her back. She has a line of people whose religions are unaccounted for. You walk your husband down the hall with a mouthful of pulp. Spit.

1996 © 2006