The Push

by Ashley Audrain

We could have counted our problems on the petals of the daisy in my bouquet, but it wouldn’t be long before we were lost in a field of them.

We ate dinner, late, on the couch, while we watched current affairs shows. We had spicy takeout on a black marble coffee table with vicious corners. We drank glasses of fizzy wine at two o’clock on weekend afternoons and then we napped until someone was roused, hours later, by the sound of people walking outside to the bar. Sex happened. Haircuts happened. I read the travel section of the newspaper and felt it was research, realistic research, for the place we’d go next. I browsed expensive stores with a hot, foamy beverage in my hands. I wore Italian leather gloves in the winter. You golfed with friends. I cared about politics! We cuddled on the lounge chair and thought it was nice to be together, touching. Movies were a thing I could watch, something that could take my mind away from the place where I sat. Life was less visceral. Ideas were brighter. Words came easier! My period was light. You played music throughout the house, new stuff, artists someone had mentioned to you over a beer at an establishment filled with adults. The laundry soap wasn’t organic and so our clothes smelled artificially mountain fresh. We went to the mountains. You asked about my writing. I never looked at another man and wondered what he’d be like to fuck instead. You drove a very impractical car every day until the fourth or fifth snowfall of the year. You wanted a dog. We noticed dogs, on the street; we stopped to scratch their necks. The park was not my only reprieve from housework. The boo...

She barely entered my mind in those days. I made sure of it. And when she slipped in uninvited, I blew her away. As if she were those ashes falling into my orange juice.

But I wanted to feel used, in a mechanical type of way that made my body feel separate from who I was. I wanted to feel like a barge in the sea. Rusted, trusted, dented.