The Wine Glass
by June Yang
She sat at the window and stared out at the rain. It was pouring, and it reminded her of the time he kissed her with his eyes open, rain dripping down his face and snaking around their sealed lips like intimate rivulets tying them together.
It had been two months since she last held him in her arms.
“I’ve never met anyone like you,” he had told her, his voice rough with emotion.
Sometimes at night she would go to sleep with his voice in her mind, soothing her anxieties of the day and lifting her up with his love.
And sometimes there was absolute silence, nothing at all, as if he never existed. During these times, she forgets that he was ever in her life.
“Mommy!” Tian Ze cried out. She jumped out of her reverie and turned to the door as she swiftly wiped her eyes dry.
“Yes, baby?”
“Mommy, I had a nightmare,” her son wailed, stumbling forward and burying his tiny face in her dress.
She shushed him gently as she slid off the window seat and onto the floor, engulfing the little boy in the folds of her arms. “Tell me about the dream, baby.”
“I dreamt that I woke up and you were gone.” Tian Ze’s eyes shone with tears. “I dreamt that you died.”
She froze.
How did he know?
“You must NEVER think this way,” she admonished, her voice sharper than she meant it to be.
Tian Ze shrank back at her tone and cried harder. “I’m s-sorry!” He stammered.
“Oh, baby,” she quickly hugged him. “I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to shout. Please forgive me.”
She stood up and carried him into her arms, pressing tender kisses to his forehead as she walked back into his room. Keeping the lights dimmed, she tucked her son into his bed. She sang him a lullaby from her childhood, repeating it softly until his eyelids grew heavy.
“Shì shàng zhí yŏu mā ma hǎo…yŏu mā de hάi zi xiàng kuài bǎo…”
Once Tian Ze fell asleep, she kissed his forehead and silently backed out of the room. She turned and walked past her study and into the bedroom at the end of the hallway.
Yong looked up from his book and smiled at his wife. She came to where he sat on his side of the bed and leaned over for a kiss. His head fell back as she pressed her lips to his, a gentle kiss meant to bid goodnight. As she pulled back, however, Yong’s hands found their way to her arms, and he held her there as he deepened the kiss. He slanted his lips across hers as he tightened his hold on her.
She instinctively wanted to pull away but forced herself to stay where she was. As Yong pulled her down onto his lap, she began to hear a different voice in her mind.
“You’re so beautiful. I love you so much,” the voice in her mind that was not Yong’s crooned, caressing her soul and lifting her upwards. She opened her eyes and realized she was floating against the ceiling, staring down as her husband lifted her dress off her body.
Yong’s eyes were closed. If they had been open, he would have realized that his wife was no longer spiritually with him. She was kissing him back and responding to his touch, but the passion he felt for her never reached her—it was never reciprocated.
“I want to touch you all night. I want you to be mine.”
She moaned in pain as her heart ached.
His voice in her mind was stoking her passion and invoking such immense pain at the same time. She watched from the ceiling as Yong mistook her moans for pleasure and began making love to her. She closed her eyes and pretended that she was with him and not Yong, and soon she was swept away in the throes of lovemaking.
“You’re mine,” she heard in her mind over and over again until she exploded in a release that was a mixture of pleasure and pain.
When it was over, she lay there next to Yong, who was already falling asleep.
“Good night, honey,” Yong whispered sleepily.
She merely squeezed his hand and turned away.
Many hours later, when the house was dead quiet, she got up and dressed. She went back to her study and unlocked her drawer, removing a folded letter that had been creased and read too many times. In the dark of night, when she felt sad and alone, as she often did, she would reread the letter by moonlight, wishing things had turned out differently.
My love,
Tomorrow night we will elope into the heavens of our minds. I cannot wait. I only want to be where you are, next to you, for every waking moment of my life.
No one understands how I feel. Marian looks at me with such adoration, and I feel nothing. Eight years of my life spent with her, and I’ve never felt so alive as the first time you and I met. I’ve never met anyone like you. You make me feel like jumping off a cliff and spreading my wings to fly. I want to shout our love from the highest building in the world. I want to be your man always and forever.
We will be together forever very soon.
I will love you always,
Me.
She clutched the letter to her chest as her mind raced back to their last day together two months ago.
After they had made love for the last time, he had poured the poison into their wine glasses before kissing her for a long time. They each drank their wine and then lay down on the hotel bed, holding on to each other tightly. As the poison coursed through their veins, they whispered their love for each other, their voices weakening by the second.
A few hours must have passed before she woke up, opened her eyes, and sat up on the hotel bed. Disoriented and weakened, she realized that she was not dead, and she began to panic.
She had beaten her hands against his chest, trying to wake him up, but he was gone. What was left of him was merely the physical remnants of what used to be his soul, already cooled after many hours of death. She had wailed against his rigid body, but nothing she did ever woke him up again.
She did not know how she found the strength to move, but she did. She dressed and packed her things, especially the wine glass that she had used, and then locked up behind her after ensuring she had left the room with no indication she was ever in it. She had wiped down his prints on his glass and put it into his hand. She remembered standing in the doorway for a long time, staring at what was left of her soulmate and wondering how it all went so wrong.
Then she went home and resumed her life as if nothing had happened.
But something did happen.
With each passing day, her soul felt more splintered than the day before, and she just knew deep down with absolute certainty that a resolution would come one day.
It was inevitable.
June Yang was born and raised in Singapore. She majored in sociology at Singapore Management University with a special interest in gender studies and modern society. She enjoys books in the thriller, romance, fantasy, and science fiction genres that encourage readers to raise philosophical questions about life, specifically about identity and culture. She has three beautiful children who often do their best to prevent her from writing anything.