We look at each other over the remains of the breakfast we shared. Your eggs lie untouched – the marks left by my teeth are clear in your slice of toast. I was abused as a child. You were raised in the slums of New York. I am white. You are white. I am waiting for an answer. You refuse to answer me.

The longer I stare at you, the more my impatience and anger blossom, growing into an enormous flower, into an entire garden of floral radience, into a tangible creature that fills the entire room. The creature that is my hostility must stretch his green, scabby arms out the window to fit. He twists his snout to the side, indicating that he wishes to scratch his back, but by now he has grown so large that this is impossible.

I know that I should not have drunk so much. I cannot think straight. I cannot think clearly. You persist in looking at me so insolently, so lovingly, that I cannot muster the appropriate disregard.

I ask you why you slept with him. You refuse to answer me.

Your eyes tell me that you slept with him because he has the one thing that I do not, the one thing that I cannot, will not ever have; he has a penis, he has a scrotum, he has testosterone. Maybe because it was the right thing to do, the proper thing to do; forget whom you are cheating upon in the heat of the moment because your clean, your not-fucked-up instincts tell you that you want him. You do not want me. You do not want to answer me, you do not want to love me, you do not want to kiss me or hold me the way you used to not so long ago.

When I look down at what is left of my oatmeal, it keeps its secrets. I learn nothing. I look back up at you and, for the first time, wish that I had not stopped drinking when I did, that I had continued until graced with that most important of all goals – oblivion. Then I would not have to look into your eyes now. I would not have to understand.

I do not want to understand; what I want is for you to answer me, and, more than that, for you to tell me what I want to hear. That you love me. Only me.

You push your chair away from the table and rise to your feet. You have never worn heels; even now your toes are hidden away in canvas tennis shoes, even now the most delicate part of you – I cannot see that either. You look like you are ready for a heated match on the courts. You look ridiculous. I am overwhelmed with desire, desire for you, desire to bury my head between your thighs and bring that charming flush back to your cheeks, desire for the sound of your voice when you scream my name. You really do look ridiculous.

I ask you again. You refuse to answer me.

After I ask you for the third time and hear nothing in response, I find my attention focusing on the leftover oatmeal, on the way the oats have congealed and stuck to the sides of the bowl, on how that will be hell on the dishwasher when we finally get around to washing it.

I focus on the sunlight that streams through the window, and then, inadvertently, I focus on the cotton curtains through which it streams. I remember the day you came home an hour later than usual, cradling them in your arms like lost children; the way your face lit up when you told me that they would suit the kitchen perfectly. I let you hang them on the rod by yourself because I did not believe you, could not believe that those delicate, airy things would suit our kitchen. Once they were dangling and the late-afternoon sun was shining through them I remember leaning forward and touching my lips to the nape of your neck. Lightly. Just once. I remember the way you rested back against my chest, crushing my breasts with the weight of your spine; I remember the way you turned your head a few inches to the right so our lips would meet.

I should have drunk more, because I ask you a fourth time and you remain silent, and by the time I raise my head from my sweaty, interlaced fingers, where it has come to rest, the kitchen is empty and you are gone.

For the life of me I cannot recall what you need to accomplish today. You may have gone to work, you may have gone to the supermarket, you may have gone to him. You may be lying diagonally across our bed upstairs, the way you have always preferred to lie, the way that forces me to either sleep on the couch or spoon up against you, my fingers just brushing your breasts, my thighs cradling yours, the scent of your perfume filling my nose. The silk of your skin filling me with sensation.

My bladder is full, and it presses achingly against my pelvis. Alcohol has always done this to me, yet I wish I had more to drink. I wish that there were enough alcohol in the world, in the universe – but I would settle for in this house – to wash away my memories. Especially my memory of the look in your eyes when I asked you for the first time and you refused to answer me. Especially that. So blank. So afraid. If it were not for the fear I would not have believed you.

I glance down at the dishes, scattered across the tablecloth that you chose; they are the blue stoneware that I liked so much on display at the store, the stoneware you really hated but decided to buy anyway in order to please me. In order to make me happy.

The coffee is cold in our mugs now. I rise to my feet. I collect the dishes, one by one, and pile them in the sink. Five minutes later, when I begin to wash them, I tell myself I will forget. One day I will forget, for I will not lose you, you see.

I will not lose you.

It is no longer about with whom you are sleeping or why or why you are no longer waking me in the morning by pressing your soft lips to the hollow of my jaw or why you do not smile at me over the dinner table. It is not even about why you often are not present at the dinner table, nor is it about why I find myself eating frozen dinners over the sink four days out of seven. Right now, right now it is about the fact that you are the one fixed point in a changing world, it is about the reason why you are everything to me.

I cannot dream – I do not want to dream of a day when I will not be able to feel your smile. No, not merely see your smile but feel it, feel the way your lips curve against the exposed skin of my neck, the way your breasts fit comfortably against mine. I loved to press my fingers up, up, between your thighs until you moaned. Arched forward. Gasped my name. I wonder whose name it is you are gasping these days.

As I soap the sponge and scrape the oatmeal from our bowls, I find myself wondering why you fell in love with me. It is not something I have had occasion to doubt for a long time, and doubting it now unsettles me. I am not the kind of person you should have loved.

Either you have decided my palm is a poor substitute or you have finally come to your senses. If it is the latter, I simply will not stand for it.

Before I leave the room to search you out, I wad the cotton curtains up in my fist. I make a damp, sweaty ball of them. In them I trap the first golden beams of sunlight. In them I trap – I do not wish to think any more, I do not even know why I ever wished to think at all. They are nothing but folds of salty cotton caught between my fingers. Nothing whatsoever. I give a sharp jerk, bringing my forearm up hard against my chest, and tear them down. The rod falls to the floor with a clatter. I smile at it.

I will not lose you; I said that already. I should not have had so much to drink.

I wish you had answered me.