Parrots - Carolyn Rudinsky

We met in July, got engaged in August and moved in together in October. We knew we were perfect together, fitted hand in glove. Two birds of a feather, we laughed at the same things and knew what the other was thinking. We were so corny our friends couldn’t stand us! Our PSAs were unrivalled in the history of lovers. If love was a drug, we were hooked, and we used daily, hourly and by the minute. She was my heroin, I was her cocaine. It’s like the two of us knew all the secrets of the universe, and every one else was just a poor sad lover on the outside of our love bubble. What pitiful wankers we were!

When the cracks appeared we papered over them, neither one of us wanting to acknowledge other other’s imperfections. The many little giggles started to wear thin. The incessant amount of time we spend together began to grate. I started to long for time away from her. Like a thirsty man, I needed to drink from a fountain, any fountain where she was not. I was sick of her playing all my music, droning on and on about artists she’d never heard of before she met me. I wished she’d stop wearing my T-shirts, my boxers, it was all so ‘It girl’ of her. How pathetic. She really was. I noticed all my expressions on her face, my sayings on her lips. Did she have no personality of her own? I began to think not. How could I ever have fallen for such a vacuum? She was simply a parrot. I began to despise her. Every little thing she did made me shudder. How grotesque she really was. I plotted my escape. There was only one way to do this and it was going to be the Band-Aid, rip it off method. While she was at work one day I packed all of my belongings and shipped them to my new place. I simply left her a note. It read:

‘I’m gone!'