A short story by Steve Gray © 2026
A room smothered with a silent floor, Where ethics fray and jagged shadows creep deeply, We pace back and forth, guarding every inch, While secrets rattle in a violent fitful seething rage. I reach to touch the softness of her face, But find a sharp recoil, a biting jest; We drift like ghosts within this narrow space, With hollow words held, then thrown in pieces across space between us, tossed recklessly into the air as we dance in an improvised disharmony.
Then comes the shot, a sudden, caustic outburst, BANG, buttons pushed, then a cacophony of pain, A heavy weighted barrage of words. I then hold this wreckage in my hand, and somehow love the hurt I’ve come to understand. Then through the reflection of the dusty half mast tattered blind on the window, there is a feeble sense that our shadows are wracked with pain.
We love each other, always have, always will, but then there’s the angst, differences, as we do what we can to communicate and keep our lives full and effervescent. The snide remarks, the challenges, the differences and the ever controlling similarities.
It’s brutal, others don’t discuss it, except for one ‘friend’ who looks for any failing, he wants to see things crumble, he wants to sense fractures in the framework, but no that doesn’t show up, I don’t let it.
Instead, I let things slowly spiral at times, I let her take the reins, I want to see where things head, she wants to see where things might lead. It changes, I sit back and listen, over a few days the deep shadows start to fade, and there is little fitful range.
There’s no recoil, there’s no outbursts that go bang! My language dilly dallies around the details, searching for a common ground, with useful meaning and low dissent. Things fit into a groove, the shadows move, our dance now a rhythmic sensation re-connected.
Our eyes meet, no more a fleeting thing, the words ‘I love you’ hang gracefully in the atmosphere as if like a cloud. The mystical cloud floats towards the half mast window and condensates on the glass. The presented angst now a fine lace of moisture.
Calmness overcame the room, breathing now took on some form of harmonic connection and it wasn’t long before the late night lectures about our differences became more about similarities than differences, cold open spaces became more intimate and warm.
How long for? Who only knows, To what degree the intimacy would continue? who only knows. But that’s what it’s all about, the angst, and the recoil, the distance and the intimacy.
This is brutal love.
