Work had been long that day. She arrived home and kicked off her heels, peeled the pants from her legs because she could – no one was home, her husband was out and the children were at school. She was alone for another blissful hour or so. She pulled a chair out at the kitchen table and sat, taking out the little book from her purse and opening it to a spare page. She began to write: her thoughts from the day, her fears, her loneliness. All in her little book, where no one would ever see it.

She had changed by the time he got home, comfy linen pants and a loose knitted top. She met him at the door with a kiss on the cheek, the fatigue evident in the circles under her eyes, the tired motions of her hands as she took his briefcase. She watched her words with him, picking out only the least inflammatory, carefully walking the tightrope of their relationship. He was in good spirits, and she sighed, feeling her shoulders relax just a bit as she went to go prepare dinner. She daydreamed of being a phoenix, free and flying, bursting into flame to be reborn from the ashes.

*It’s time for a few small repairs,* she thought to herself after dinner. The kids were upstairs working on their homework – something science related, or maybe math. Her husband sat in his usual chair, drinking. One drink, then another. He was poison without the drink, but deadly with it. She wondered how the days seemed to pass at all, how she could be really moving forward in time. Sometimes she felt hypnotized, like the rest of the world would fade away and she went through the days in a trance, working her life around him, working her life around answering to him, making him better.

She wanted to leave him, but was more afraid of him leaving her. In the calm times she wondered if she was blowing the whole thing out of proportion. The times when he whispered sweet nothings in her ear and pulled her close to him in the mornings to make love to her, his breath sour in her face and his kisses making her feel isolated.

He was modestly drunk, and when he clinked the ice against his glass she rose to refill it. Sometimes it was like this, sometimes he made her feel like she wasn’t even worthy of his words. After all these years, after their children, sometimes she felt like nothing more than a peripheral player in his life.

In rare moments of clarity, she thought she deserved to be important. In the kitchen she shook as she opened the little toolbox and shook something onto the ice before pouring the amber liquid over it. She stirred it, and with a deep breath she took it back out to him.

In the middle of the night she rose and stepped outside. There was a light breeze, and she smiled. *Dry is good, wind is better.*

She took one breath, then another. The car was packed. She would leave, she would start over.

She woke her children, one after the other. “Come on,” she told them, and when they hesitated she smiled and wrapped her arms around them, pulling them into her and stroking their hair. She told them how much she loved them, how they were everything to her. How they helped her hold on. “Get a sweater,” she said softly.

When the children were safely packed away in the car, she came back to stand in her kitchen. She had made the necessary arrangements, and she knew her husband would not wake in time to stop her.

She counted the years she had lost to him, and counted the years that she would need to heal. She saw the future spread ahead of her, and in that moment she almost changed her mind. But then she thought of herself rising, flying away to freedom. To a place where she was loved. To a man who loved her.

*Strike a match,* she told herself, the box shaking in her hands. *Go on and do it.*

She took the children to her sister’s, who came outside and rubbed the sleep from her eyes and asked what was going on. The woman hugged her children goodbye. She got back in her car.

As she drove, she cried, sitting at the steering wheel as she left her life behind. She had never felt so alone. She knew she would never see *him* again, would never hear the monstrous destruction of his words again.

She was afraid to be alone, but now she was free. Free to fly and do and see and live. She had lit the sky ablaze and held on, she had felt the world burn down around her and now she was rising. Clear into the dawn she flew, toward something better. She was out there on her own, sure. But she would be alright.

She was going home.