Melika

The green digits showed 1:24. How had I missed my exit? Instinct and habit had been shut off through distraction and vision had been blurred through the tears.

There are tastes and textures to tears, did you know? The tears I cried when I missed him were salty and hot. The tears I cried when my child was born were naked and sweet. Naked tears happened one other time, the first time I slept with him after having loved him for a year. Something about that orgasm and my total and utter submission to the moment and to him made me vulnerable, making me cry, and those tears tasted sweet and naked.

Then there are the bitter and humiliating tears of betrayals and lies. Those are the hardest to cry, because they wash nothing, they heal nothing. They boil out of an uncontrollable fire in your heart and spill over onto your cheeks, burning and stinging your face, falling down to your lap, leaving a trail of disbelief and loss in their wake. Those were the tears that obliterated my vision, making me miss my exit. Tears of betrayal, bitter and painful, ironically making me miss my exit—exit, the only thing left to do.