8/28/10

Undone
By Felicia Aguilar


Mona stared at the shattered pieces of glass on the floor and then turned on James.

“You’re not even going to clean it up, are you?”

He gave her an uncaring glare. “Pick up your own damn mess.”

“You did this, you know,” she said. “You ruined everything.”

"Yeah, well you keep sticking around, don't you?"

"For better or worse, James. I guess I'm the only one that values our vows."

James turned and walked out of the room then, muttering something about her being a crazy bitch. At that moment, Mona felt crazy. She had thrown the bell and aimed right for his head. It hit the wall behind him instead. She'd seen the strange numbers and text messages on his phone again. Four affairs in five years of marriage. Mona didn’t know why she’d put up with it for so long. He was never going to change.

She bent down and began picking up the shards of glass one by one. She had collected glass bells all her life, but her favorite was the one given to her by James on their wedding day. It was pure white with an emerald hummingbird on top and their wedding date engraved on the bottom. Now the hummingbird lay scattered in several different places on the floor, the bell broken and chipped. It wasn’t beyond repair but it would take a massive effort to return it to its former state.

Mona cradled the pieces in her hands wondering how she would get them back together. She could glue it all but what would that accomplish? In a few years, the glue would come undone. The shards would splinter apart again and the cracks in the bell would be plainly visible for everyone to see.

Mona thought better of it, and swept it all into the trash instead.


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Felicia Aguilar has been writing stories all of her life. Her work has been published in The NW Drizzle, Postcard Shorts, Daily Love, and the Flash Fiction Offensive. She lives in Dallas, Texas and is the mother to two wild toddler children, and wife to a wonderful husband who supports all of her creative endeavors. More of her work can be seen at http://www.editred.com/whyshewrote.