When All Is Said and Done

He told her he loved her after a month. She was giddy for weeks afterwards gushing about how perfect he was, how she couldn’t think about being with anyone else. He was her. She was him. Two people in one body. Whole.
Five months later he moved in, marvelling at the luxury and sheer splendour of the place, how beautiful everything was – just like the owner.
Of course I had heard all this before but when you don’t have a mouth, how can you voice your concerns?
So I watched instead as his things multiplied, reclaiming me, her space, and invading her life.
They would spend most evenings staring at the star-encrusted sky, losing themselves in endless possibilities. They seemed peaceful, content, comfortable in each other’s arms, and my doubts began to subside.
Six months later – a year to the day to be precise, he asked her to marry him, and of all the places he could have chosen, he chose here, inside me. She raised a hand to her mouth and cried, two glistening tracks streaming down her cheeks. Of course she said yes, he was “the one”, the one she had been waiting her whole life for. And he was hers.
But then one day everything changed.
I heard them arguing early one morning, their bedroom below me and slightly to the right, flinging insults at each other like it was no-one’s business.
I thought it was a lovers’ tiff, that’s all they usually are; except this was the start of something bitter and nasty like a cursed lemon. The frequency of these exchanges increased from twice a week to once a day, sometimes more; him slamming doors and bounding up the stairs while she smashed plates and ran to the bathroom in floods of tears.

When All Is Said and Done

They stopped coming to see me but that didn’t stop the fact that I caught the overspill of their heated arguments:
‘You bloody liar!’
‘Here we go again.’
‘How could you do this to me?’
‘You think I do this for fun, that I get some kick out of it?’
‘I hate you!’
‘Good, because I hate you too!’
He slammed the front door shaking the foundations of the house.
He never came back.
She hasn’t visited me in months and sometimes I forget that she’s still here. She is of course; I hear her shuffling about downstairs, occasionally dropping things and cursing out loud. But at least the crying has stopped.
She hasn’t seen the state I have become, allowing decay and despair to set in. I’m literally falling apart; the rafters are paper thin and rotting, the floor nothing but debris – the aftermath of an arduous and bitter war.
I hope she visits me again someday soon and sees the mess I have become.
And I have a feeling she will.
I heard her on the phone last night gushing about another guy.