Soldier Sailor

by Claire Kilroy

I ate my breakfast standing up, staring at myself chewing in the mantelpiece mirror. Been a while since I’d seen myself in make-up. An abrupt laugh although nothing was funny. I sounded mad so abruptly stopped, which sounded madder still. I put my cup and bowl in the dishwasher and then fished them back out. I washed them. I dried them. I returned them to the cupboard. Left no trace. My husband’s breakfast dishes remained untouched in the sink. He generally cleans up after himself. I’ll give him that. What a treasure. It’s so low, Sailor. The bar for men is set so low.

swiped the chaos into black plastic sacks, dumped the sacks in the boot of the car. Back upstairs to reef all my clothes off their hangers. Seams ripped, buttons pinged. My clothes, some of them beautiful, no longer fit me. Loss of self, loss of self—hard to bear. I bagged them up, out of sight, out of mind. I stuffed that sack into the boot too and blinked at it. Like a dead body, I thought, which it kind of was. I loved those clothes, loved the girl I had been in them, but she was gone.