art,  contemporary art,  lady gaga,  modern art

Milk





















Forgetting the milk was a mistake. Do the shopping bags feel lighter? Are they noticeably sans milk? Don’t be ridiculous, they’re shopping bags. They feel as heavy as all shopping. It will be fine. How can it not be? The sun has that brilliant winter-weekend-morning touch about it; cold, blinding and strong enough to make you smile at the frost particles in the tarmac. 

The gloves don’t really work. The weave is too loose and they let the chill of the season through, and at the same time they restrict finger movements; making it all but impossible to pick the right key out of all the others on the chain and then get it into the lock. I take them off and push them into my jacket pocket so I can open the door but the frost from the tarmac is in my hands and they feel large and unresponsive. He must have been able to hear me because suddenly the door is open and a whisper of warmth from inside brushes my skin.

I smile as broadly as I can, “I’ve got the shopping!” 
He nods and bends down, scooping up all of the bags at my feet into his fists, “you’ve forgotten the milk.”
How did he know? I claw for a response. “Did I?” 
He turns and paces with the shopping into the kitchen where he sets about taking it all out of the bags and putting each item on the surface above the fridge. I stand beside him and help do the same until the bags are empty and one or two have floated across the floor. 
“Now there’s nothing to drink.” 
“What? There’s juice, there’s coffee-”
“Can’t have coffee without milk.”
“You have yours black!”
“You don’t.” 
“I don’t mind! I’ll go without.” 
“But you always drink coffee before you go to work.”
“It’s fine.” I laugh and rub my hands together, “It’s freezing out there!” 
He starts putting some of the shopping into the fridge; meat on the bottom shelf, vegetables on top and dairy products on the side. There is a gaping space in dairy products which I try not to see.
“Why didn’t you wear those gloves I made you?” He wraps his hands round mine and at the base of his upturned wrist I can see the last letter of my name; part of the tattoo I told him would be ironic. Those were the days when we were children and he was a virgin and we hadn’t slept together.
“Oh I did!” I stretch a grin and slip my hands out from his so I can pull the gloves out of my pockets triumphantly. “Ta-da!”
“They’re not going to work if you take them off.” 
“I only did that so I could open the door.” 
“If they don’t work, you can say.” 
“No, no, they do work; they do work. It’s just they let a bit of the cold in so my hands slow down.” 
“So they don’t work.” 
“I didn’t say that.” 
“You know we’ve got your niece and nephew coming over for a few days tomorrow. It’s their half-term holidays and we promised your sister.” 
“Fuck.”
He looks at me strangely. “What’s wrong?”
“I’d forgotten about that.”
“What are they going to have on their cereal without any milk, eh? Kids love that stuff, it’s like they can still see their mom’s breasts or something when they taste it.” 
I know he’s trying to make me laugh like we used to, but my chest is tight and I can’t smile. “Don’t talk about my sister’s breasts.”
“I wasn’t talking about your sister’s breasts!”
“Then don’t talk about breasts in general!” 
He falls silent, I can see in his eyes that he wants us to speak softly together; the way we used to after making love. But I’ve forgotten what words we used to say and we both know we’re going to spend the next hour yelling and screaming. 




Art work – ‘Milk Stones’
Thanks to Mark M. Whelan
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