I leaned against my car and took another drag and blew it out in exasperationlooking at him.  Sitting cross legged in the parking lot where we worked, furiously smoking his cigerette with the look of hurt and boredom on his face.  It called to me, even after two years.  I looked to the skyline instead.

"Let me understand you, you have no room in your life for me because I said you had been abusive?"  I sighed and half laughed.  If only he had beat me, or some other form of abuse we were both more intimate with, of our pasts.  I might have saved myself in time.  I looked back at him, his back rose as if I could see the fur standing on end like a cornered wolf.

"You said one thing, and did another... consistently in our relationship... and because we are thrown together again socially you do not have space for me because how I hurt you with that word.  Gods help me it would have been easier to bare had you struck me... " I stopped and looked at him with his narrowed eyes, hurt disbelief on his face.  

"When did I let you down in the three years we were together.  When.  When you were in my home, with my family.... or when your wife decided to have another child... did I not hold her while you two screamed at each other in the hours after she was born?  Did I not go out and buy the diapers and the formula and try to make the arrangement we were all aware of bearable for all? So tell me, with this peace offering I am making now.... When did I let you down? " 

"Does it do any of us any good with the half million conversations in my head I have had with you... how you both apologized to me... how you both tried to make it better, and I was able to be there again...you for me...  for you both... for the children....  How I kept my faith in you past all reason... tell me how I broke faith with you.... please I would like to know." 

I looked down on him long hair framing his angled face, his eyes hurt, furious and confused and I realized I was wasted on him.

I was standing on the cliff side behind the cottage where I lived. Wind wiped my hair and skirts, lashing legs and face. 

Would freefalling kill me before I reached the safety of the water, or would I arch gracefully into the water navigating safely amidst the unyielding rocks?

Slipping my clothes off, I stood calmly on the precipice.