Golden cage

CHAPTER ONE

I used to believe in the stories my mom told me before bed. Mostly in the one about a bird in a golden cage that sings such a sad song again and again that the leaves lose their color and the flowers bend their little heads.”What does she sing about, mama?””She sings about love”, she used to say.”Why is she sad then?””She gave up her freedom for love, but her keeper doesn’t love her anymore.”She told me that a man is nothing without his freedom and I believed her. If I only knew how she had a bad marriage, how at night when we all fell asleep she would go out on the terrace to cry. If I knew that her heart was broken and that she was cheated, I would never have become that bird in the golden cage she told me about.I did not know.I foolishly believed that my parents were the happiest people in the world and that Mom waiting for Dad every day with a cooked meal and a cracked smile, was something normal.It was not.I thought that the fact that he stopped kissing her and the fact that he stopped hugging her and whispering gentle words to her, was just a sign that they were getting old.Love doesn’t know for years, but I didn’t know it then.However, the years passed, and, as someone who lived his whole life with lies, I married one such lie. The biggest of all lies. The king of lies. And I was his queen. But one thing that I didn’t know about queens is that they can get lonely and sad.

Now I sit at our dining table and look out the window. The leaves outside have turned yellow, the flowers have not raised their heads for a long time, and I live in a court of delusion.I chew my days and break my teeth on every new one I spend in this cage that I voluntarily entered and gave him the key.I would sing. I would, I swear, but I spent all the notes, locked all the melodies, and forgot the key somewhere in the past years.He’ll be back from work soon. My husband. The one I thought would love me forever. But in love, people need to invest like they do in houses. Our house consists only of walls in which empty promises reside.Someone’s ringing the doorbell. Not someone. He. He rings and I open it for him, offering him the same cracked smile that my mother used to offer to my father.

I made our coffee, asked him what his day was like, and put two cups on the table. I pour for both him and me. It is as bitter as this life.I watched him loosen his tie. I look at his stormy blue eyes in which all my tides have died and I wonder why I once thought I could dive in them without consequences. Those eyes made me forget how to swim. Those eyes made me sink to the bottom.I’ve been packing to go for years.And when I go I want to forget his name, him, and that look in his eyes.The same one he has now while he’s watching me as we drink coffee across from each other. Like I’m a dead thing. It’s like my heart isn’t beating in my chest.