The kiss was all wrong. Was it the timing? The form? We’d paired our mouths together numerous times, yet something wasn’t quite right here.
My face contorts as I pull away from him.
“What?” he asks as he studies my expression.
“I can’t,” I answer and move my head from side to side.
“You’re still thinking about her?” He crosses his arms over his chest, injured.
I put my fingertips to my lips and turn my eyes away. I need to think. I try to decipher what my body is telling me. And I hear Jacob huff.
“Veronica.” He says my name as though I’m being disciplined. Like a parent frustrated with their child who’s taking too long to tie their shoelaces before school. As if we’re running late to get somewhere. Losing time.
But I’m not sure whose schedule I should be working with.
I feel like a clock is ticking inside my veins. The strong rhythm of the gears makes my hands shake. I can’t read the numbers. Jacob is counting along to the second hand and I’m not privy to the sound of each tick.
My body tells me the time on his watch is trivial. Wounds do not heal on demand.
“It’s like I can taste her,” I finally manage to say. I know it’s not the reply Jacob was hoping for. In an instant, I can see that reflected in the way his lip curls on just the left side of his mouth. How slowly he blinks at me. The angle his head takes when a hard breath escapes from him.
“You can’t taste her.”
I taste something.
Someone.
That’s not my husband on my tongue.
“It’s been four months, Veronica.”
His words are an incantation. I shake my head to knock the bewitchment out of my ears. “I apologized,” Jacob continues. “We did the counseling like you wanted. I gave you space, time…”
He rattles off all the reasons I should forget it happened. Forget her: the faceless woman in our bed I found him with. It’s her voice I continue to hear in the corners of the room. Rather, the sounds Jacob extricated from her as he buried himself inside her.
Her face is every woman I pass in the street. Replaces mine in the mirror. Is in the reflection of light on my husband’s pupils when he looks at me.
She is everywhere even though Jacob swears she is no longer anywhere. She is dancing on his tongue with every word his mouth forms.
She is here, lingering in my mouth after this first kiss since that horrible afternoon. “We aren’t going to move past this if you won’t let it go,” Jacob finishes his repetitive monologue.
I let him kiss me again. This time I can taste his desperation to be intimate with me. To erase my hesitance. To continue on as though she never happened.
I push him away.
She did happen.
“I’m not ready,” I say with a sprinkling of my distress.
“When, then? Huh? How long are you going to keep punishing me? You can’t expect me to wait around for your forgiveness forever.”
Why shouldn’t I expect him to wait longer? To be patient and empathetic with me?
Suddenly, I understand the aftereffect of his kiss. My hand is at my mouth again, afraid to say it out loud.
“That taste,” I mumble.
Jacob’s patience frays. He questions my taste buds before humoring me. His words and tone feel mismatched. Like he doesn’t care about the sensation swimming around my mouth. His objective is to get us into bed together.
“It’s ashes,” I tell him.
He scoffs.
“Veronica, I haven’t smoked since I was a teenager.”
A part of me knew he wouldn’t grasp what I meant, but I feel disappointment anyway.
“You set our marriage on fire when you slept with her.”
“What?”
His disposition speeds up the ticking. I feel the pulse in my throat. It’s time. The alarm is silent, but I hear it.
“I think it’s over, Jacob.” I swallow the clock back down and take a deep breath in. “All that’s left between us is ashes. It’s burned to the ground. Not even the foundation is left.”
My husband’s eyes widen before his lips gather into a frown. The blood vessel at his temple swells and his jaw muscles flex.
I imagine more words will only make this moment worse. I don’t want to fight anymore. I turn from him and think about what I’ll pack to take to my mother’s. It’s too hard to sleep in a bed that can’t feel like ours again.
“That’s it?”
I remain silent and head for our closet.
“All that work for nothing?”
I look back at him. “Was it really all for nothing?”
“Yeah, if you’re still going to leave me. Why did I bother with any of it?” He puts his hands on his hips.
“So, you’re saying I should have saved you some time and money and just ended things four months ago?”
“Yes.” He realizes he answered too quickly and struggles to recover. “I mean, no.”
“That’s why I can taste her on your lips, Jacob.” I feel pressure building in my chest as the clock speeds up once more. Words start to get caught in my throat. “If you haven’t forgotten about her, then how can I?”
He lets out a long sigh instead of a retort.
Somehow I thought there would be more tears for this. More salt on our cheeks.
And then, I wonder who actually started this fire.
Tinamarie Cox lives in Arizona with her husband, two children, and rescue felines. Her written and visual work has appeared in many online and print publications under various genres. She has two poetry chapbooks with Bottlecap Press: Self-Destruction in Small Doses, and A Collection of Morning Hours. Her first full-length poetry collection, Through a Sea Laced with Midnight Hues, was released in 2025 with Nymeria Publishing. You can follow her on socials @tinamariethinkstoomuch and explore more of her work at tinamariethinkstoomuch.weebly.com.
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