and saccharine

"you make everything so, treacle like", she said, "every sentiment becomes sticky ."

i had known Sandra a long time. too long i guess, long enough to know when she meant what she said. and this she meant.

you make everything so, treacle like, she said.
and this she meant you make everything so, treacle like, she said.
and this she said.

I walked away with the thought still pulsing. My head hurt and my heart felt sore but…

But.

Walk on. Walk on.

I walked past the bus stop and the kebab shop where meat hung like a surrealist sculpture. Surrealism and Dada collided in my mind fracturing the words she had spoken. Re-writing them over and over and with hammer hard beats. Rain fell in an accompaniment to my pulse and the hammer beats. Puddles collected images. Kerb stones and streetlights.

you make everything so, treacle like, she meant you make everything so, treacle like, she said.
and this she meant you make everything so,
treacle like, she said.
and this she meant you make everything so, treacle like, she said.
and this she meant you make everything so,
treacle
like,

The words felt like a corruption of vowels. As if syntax had been shredded and replaced with an alien understanding of English.

and saccharine i had known sandra too long enough to know ...

How the hell could I go back and make right what I had said so wrong? Life isn’t like that is it? It isn’t a rehearsal. You get the once so make the most of it. And I had screwed up big time.

“I love you more than life itself.”

Was that so bad a thing to say? Was it?
Was it so wrong to allow a little sentiment to enter our world?

I didn’t think so and the more I thought the more I knew that I was right and she was wrong.

and this she said.
and
this she meant you
make everything so, treacle like, she said.
and this she said.

Sandra lives in this place where only the real carries weight and anything even a little mushy is tantamount to false emotions. She had never grasped the fact that humans have to deal with their own inner feelings whilst trying to manage the emotional expectations of others.

Sorry?

Why was I sorry?

I hadn’t done anything wrong. All I had said was “I love you more than life itself.”

She had made me feel as though I had violated a nun. As though I had screwed a choir boy.

and saccharine i had known sandra too long enough to know ...

Sorry?

and saccharine i had known sandra too long enough to know ...be better

The bitch.

I turned my face into the rain and raised two fingers back toward her flat.

and this she said.
and
this she meant you
make everything so,
treacle like, she said.
and this she said
and this

My head began to clear and the rain seemed warm and friendly. Puddles fell at my feet in wet circles.

I walked on.

And on.