A story
Drip. Drip. Drip. Drip. Drip.
You promised me you'd fix that tap, promised me faithfully. But now I lie here, wakeful, in the black loneliness, and it just keeps on dripping.
Drip. Drip.
Like the ticking of a clock, marking off the seconds, minutes, hours I shall spend alone.
Drip. Drip. Drip.
SCREAM
I sigh. Or rather not alone, but unsupported.
I struggle out of bed, and shuffle towards the nursery where both Danielle and Dorothy are crying now. Stub my toe, with a suppressed "Shit!".
Take the twins on to my lap, dry their eyes, rock them and tuck them in. Sing them a lullaby to the metronome time of the drip, drip, drip. "Hush little baby don't say a word, Daddy's gonna buy you a mocking bird..."
Only he isn't, is he?
Daddy isn't going to be buying them anything.
Daddy isn't here.
I caress their sleeping faces, and pray, to a God I don't believe in, that this time they will stay asleep.
Listen to the door creak as I shut it, another job you didn't do.
Drip. Drip. Drip.
I want to take a wrench, and smash that tap to pieces, to hear the drip become a gush, a roar. To wail and scream, and curse you at the top of my voice for that broken promise, and all the others. To wreak the devastation I'm feeling inside on my surroundings.
A couple of tears squeeze between my lashes.
Drip. Drip.
You promised me it was forever.
You promised.
How could you leave me like this?
How could you lie?
Drip. Drip. Drip. Drip.
How dare you die?