'You want him to stop melting your records' by Gillian Russell O'Shaughnessy

down to ashtrays in the oven, and stop butting out his rollies in your best of the beatles vinyl because music makes you happy and he knows it, you want him to stop pulling the phone away when your friends ring so now they hardly ever do and you want him to stop coming home late with sour skin, stalking the hallway in his steel caps shouting hands up who wants to die - sonny’s buuuuuuuuuuurning from that nick cave song he knows you hate and you want him to stop making you pay when he gives you a lift but he doesn’t want you to go, so out of nowhere, he swerves the car up onto the curb, he presses his foot to the floor so hard the engine screams and you scream then he cuts back right before everything goes to hell, a miss so fine you think you might vomit and you ask yourself, not for the first time, is today the day he performs his dream death to be some kind of gothic legend revered in local nightclubs and you want him to stop seeing that other girl, the one with the blue-black mohawk and the most ear piercings of anyone you know, stop telling you that girl is flexible like you wouldn’t believe, man, you want him to stop spinning silence till you break, he knows you’ll always break first, then he shouts in your face so close you can feel the spray of his spit and he acts like you’re the disgusting one, like it’s your fault, you want him to stop, he has to stop, you have to stop, you will stop the moment you remember the girl you were before you said yes to men like him. The girl you will be again.