Writing: Moment in Time - Phone Call

She hangs up "the horns", staring at the black and white comical cow phone her mother gave her for her birthday two years ago, unable to rip her eyes from that sad cow. He seemed to reflect her feelings exactly. He called, stripped her of her dignity not unlike the last night they were together, where he left her bleeding and naked on her bed while she cried. While a flying cow might have been humorous to her in another time and another place, the startled cow smashed against the wall with the force of all her anger. Shattered cow parts get thrown across the room, raining black and white plastic shards half way across her forest green berber carpet. She watches with an intensity that could melt those little plastic cow parts, tears welling up behind her ice blue eyes.

She let him in again, into her life; into a place he no longer had any right to enter. Crossing the room, walking over the cow graveyard, she reaches into the oaken cabinet that she bought last year, with him, to celebrate their one year anniversary, and pulls out all the pictures of the two of them. She kept them in a small metal My Little Pony lunch box she used when she was a little girl. Cradling the box against her Flogging Molly shirt, she sits on a giant blue bean bag chair, her absolute favorite in the entire apartment.

Moving with agonizing slowness and trembling fingers, she clicks open the rusted lock and looks at pictures that flood her psyche with emotions. Fingernails painted with sky blue graze across his photo frozen face, and gently lift the picture from the box. Holding it gently, almost as if it was a delicate and easily frightened insect, she slowly moved her unoccupied hand to a small pile of papers and miscellaneous items sitting next to her big blue chair. A click and then a sudden flame, the photo starts to burn, lighting her face with a dark smile. Picture after letter after photo after note burned in succession, her emotions as volatile as the fire she is commanding. The last one burns, scattering ashes in her charred lunchbox among the ashes of the other dearly departed pictures. She stands up and gathers up the innocent bystandard who perished because of him. The cattle graveyard vanishes and the forest green is no longer spotted. All gathered in her little box, she puts it back in the oak cabinet, closing it slowly, all tears spent.