A short, short story called, Finally

     When he told me truth, I was standing at the bottom of the stairs.
     I couldn't take my eyes off his feet. They were bare; the knuckles of his toes knarled, the hairs; thick and black. I wished I was sitting down. The strength in my knees was gone, but not enough to let me slide to the floor. 

     Slowly, I lifted my eyes to meet his; the pale blue disks looked back at me. They usually told me so much, those eyes, they always spoke to me in soft whispers. I searched for a smile, for the ends of his mouth to turn up in a roar of laughter, but there was nothing. 

     So, he didn't love me. That was why he'd been behaving like a stranger; a shadow in the house, in our bed. He'd fallen out of love with me. It was so unromantic, so understated. Me, standing at the bottom of the stairs. Him, in his floral shorts after coming in from the garden. 

     I wonder what made him tell me, then. If it was the sun blasting from the sky that made him finally run for cover, to find me, coming down from getting dressed into a light green dress that was soft on my new, round belly.