Over an Ant Hill

“No.” She brushed a lock of hair that had fallen across her face, framing the edge of her eye with a glint of blonde.

He reached forward, and caught her hand in the stroke, grasping the fingers and the lock they enclosed.

“Love me.”

She pulled her hand out, letting the hair fall back against her face. She reached up again and tucked it behind her ear, a quick movement that didn’t have the drawn-out decisiveness of the former.

“I can’t.” She looked away when she said it, and down at the green planks of the bench beneath them. It was worn-out with black marks of indiscernible graffiti. She traced her hand against them and wondered how many of them where a profession of love.

“But I love you.”

She caught his gaze and slowly looked away, back down at the bench. In between the planks ants scurried around a nest.

“If you loved me…” Hands folded protectively in her lap she sighed. “If you loved me then you would of married me instead of that other girl.”

“I was foolish.”

She doubted the ants were foolish as they hurried back and forth, so fast and far away they appeared as a clump of swaying black.

“Love isn’t foolish.”

But affairs were, and she knew that.

“You’re only here for sex, otherwise you would’ve married me long ago.”

The wind around them picked up, tugging at the edges of her skirt tucked beneath her. She slipped them under tighter, unwilling to let the wind attempt to carry her hems with it.

“It’s not like that.”

She raised her head to the sky, wondering how many people were crying under it.

“It is.”

She could feel him staring at her, so slowly she returned her eyes to level his. She waited, softly in the wind, with the ant hill beneath her seat, for an answer.

“Don’t you love me?”

With hair falling into her eyes, and a hand pushed against the graffiti on the bench, she got up. She wondered if he’d sit there alone for long, or notice the ants nest. But in the end none of it mattered. Not the fact that she loved him, nor the fact that he didn’t love her.

Reviews

[Marie]

THis is a strange piece of work, but I like it. The ants seem symbolic of the human condition.