Scavengers

He buzzed around my dying relationship, waiting for its last breath, standing close enough to feel mine upon his neck. My last lie, our last hotel room, his last chance to feel alive.

Marriage is so often uttered as a monolith, a monument cut from a single, smooth source, but in truth, it’s a body, filled with living parts, parts that can die while the rest carries on, as if it can run and jump and breathe like its younger years. 

With Roger, the sex died last. The humor, the money, the talk of children— discarded hearts and limbs, waiting to be scavenged. And then, when the facade of happiness was balanced on a feather, our final pleasure was plucked away, leaving only silence and eruption, sometimes in isolation, sometimes all at once.

Saxon was younger than me. I wasn’t his boss, per se, but it was the kind of per se that could still cost me my job. The kind of per se that gave me an excuse to make him stay late, when the office lights detected no motion, and desires were muffled by the sounds of a distant vacuum.

His eavesdrops made me blush; the more Roger’s voice urked my phone, the more Saxon’s smile lured me into a life less complicated. The white noise that was once my husband would drift away, and I was reborn in the youthful dimples that sat outside my office door.

He encircled my world when Roger began to sleep on the couch, watching the wounded wedded, smelling my tears from the clouds. He glided through the currents of my trial separation and perched upon my desk, stalking the carcass of a dying decade.

Then, beneath the open sky, consumed by the summer heat, arbitrary rules melted into obscurity outside the building that enforced them. 

And he bit—feeding upon the remnants of a fallen love, swallowing the disease of my self-doubt, stretching his wings, and soaring me away from the sorrow. 

We nested in a hotel room, overlooking the cliffs. I saw the world as he did, small and ripe, and waiting to be eaten. 

The way he saw me.

Work became play; secret signals, hidden hisses, gushing growls in vacant lifts. I’d encircle his cubicle and wait for his calls to collapse. Waiting to be whisked away to our kingdom of cashmere and cotton. Foregoing the thrill of the hunt for the pleasure of patience. 

But Roger, too, stalked. Watching our punctured nuptials perish with each affair. Then, swooping down and knocking on our torrid door. 

He postured and grunted, and pecked at the sensitive areas of my soul: our first date, my grandmother’s funeral, the miscarriages. Saxon squawked and used his size, and Roger vomited savage truths of midlife crises and fleeting infascinations. The two danced around the dying marriage, grasping at what little they could.

Roger grabbed a piece of posh decor—a miniature obelisk, cut from a single, smooth source—and swung.

And all was silent in our nest among the clouds.

Blood pooled in fading dimples. 

Tears pooled in faded eyes.

I encircled my relationship, waiting for its last breath, standing close enough to feel his upon my neck. My last lie, our last hotel room, his last chance to feel alive.

We stood beside the carcass and told ourselves we weren’t predators; waiting for the police to arrive, waiting for the world to pick us apart...

...like vultures.