What Love Means

What Love Means

At the age of five I learned what love meant.  Love meant that Mommy wanted to be with someone else besides me.  At the age of eight I saw what love meant.  Love meant that Daddy loved his alcohol.  At the age of seventeen I felt what love meant.  Love meant that instead of being at home, I was in the back of his car.  At the age of twenty-six I knew what love meant.  Love meant that I had love myself enough to do anything to get away from my husband.  

For once in my life my head was clear and I knew what had to be done.  It was a difficult plan because I had never even thought about killing someone or had any idea how to do it.  I mean, I have watched TV and cop shows and whatever so I kind of knew how not to leave clues.  Don’t do crazy internet searches, pay with cash, and don’t leave your hardware store receipts around.  Making it look like an accident would be the difficult part.  

I sat down at the kitchen table and took my fork with shaking hands as I plunged the utensil into my steaming macaroni.  He sat on the couch, hand down his pants as if he thought his junk was going to walk away and he had to anchor it down.  He was a damn slob and the mere reminder of his presence; the smell of his sweat on his dirty laundry, the shavings left in the sink in the morning, the coffee cup left on the counter after he left was enough to make my insides squirm with disgust and hatred.  

“Dan, dinner’s getting cold,” I called from the table reluctantly.  I would rather be anywhere else in the world than sitting besides him at the dinner table.  He grabbed his beer can off the arm of the sofa and burped his way over to the table, grabbed the bowl and retreated to the couch.  I let out a sigh of relief as he plopped down on the couch.  Dodged a bullet.   I stared at him as he took bite after bite, the noise of his chewing affected me and made me want to get sick.  If only I had spiked his macaroni with arsenic in a matter of hours he’d be writhing in agony, inches from a painful death.  But, arsenic could be traced and I was looking for something more along the lines of an accident.  That specific accident I hadn’t yet figured out but hopefully my brain would come up with an idea soon before he decided it was time for my face to meet the back of his hand again.