A Memoir by Lee Ann Stevens
I’m sorry about the time you wiped your finger along the wood of the book shelf and yelled at me because it was dusty. When I stood there, holding the hand of our three-year-old son, with our unborn daughter rocking in my womb. When we were on our way to the neighborhood pool on a hot August Saturday.
“How many books have you read this year, anyway?” you ask, your cold eyes fixated on my face, your voice thick with suppressed rage.
You stalk around the room inspecting the level of dust on other shelves.
I’m sorry I don’t choose to make dusting a priority.
“What do you do all day anyhow?” you growl. “Spend time with those supposed friends of yours?”
I’m sorry I’ve found a community of women in the latest town we’ve moved to. After the latest job transfer you said would change everything because it was that other job in that last place that made you go to bars instead of coming home to your family at night.
I’m sorry I don’t leave a meal prepared for you so when you come home at 2:00am you can have the dinner I didn’t know you weren’t going to show up for.
I’m sorry I can’t leave the hospital early after the Caesarian that brought our daughter into the world and you’re finding it a challenge to care for our active son all day.
I asked you once, when we were still young and none of this had happened yet, “Do you ever look at an expanse of grass on the side of a hill and imagine yourself rolling down through it all? The joy and freedom of it. Do you ever feel your heart expand at the sight of sunlight on a verdant field?”
“No,” you said blankly.
I’m sorry I didn’t realize then what that said about you.
I’m sorry I changed the rules of the game and left you.
I’m sorry I wasn’t better to myself sooner.
I’m not sorry I was able to survive you.
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Lee Ann Stevens writes fiction and creative nonfiction. Publication credits include Straylight Literary Magazine, Good Old Days Magazine, the blog BoomSpeak, and Story Circle Network Journal and publications. Additional work will soon appear in The Journal of Expressive Writing, Persephone Literary Magazine, and Pure Slush Lifespan Series