On afternoons like this, I often find myself breathless somehow. I feel like checking in on that old man of mine, the one who said, "Once you marry, you'll be just fine."
Sometimes I want to stare at him for a long time with questioning eyes. He would surely ignore that gaze and discover the ailments of my married life, the ache of not being able to write anything, the stories of how I've fallen silent.
I know he could. I know everything about that man. No one else has ever been able to discover me the way he does. One person understands me, another shares a home with me. To one I am intimate, to the other I am formal.
On harsh afternoons like this, the man is at the office. Frantically busy, signing hundreds of office files, occasionally sipping sugarless tea, often forgetting lunch under the pressure of work. The man who once found the drudgery of employment unbearable is now such a workaholic!
Well, should I text him today with some excuse? Why not? What harm could it do? It's just a text!
Ugh! Who's ringing the doorbell so insistently? Oh, Ayra must be back from school with her father!