across the table.

across the table, his face was grim; she became tacit in posture, belittled while words were withheld. she could smell the sin upon him, buried deep under his nails, nails that could ruin a chalkboard and a set of ears in one fell swoop.
trepid og tempting his anger, she chewed in deliberate numbers: counting the times her teeth ground her food, counting the breaths between bites, counting the gulps of wine, counting on the continuance of time to save her.
he knew she knew.
the sacrilege performed against their vows of marriage, their once devoted love gone to a whore who posed too great of a burden on the simulacrum of a once beautiful note, gone sour in the sustain and resonating only of contempt.
she refused to meander through the events seriatim that their now decayed relationship had suffered. she had suffered enough and one meal was the only event she had to keep breathing through, although to-morrow would be no different.
she wondered what the legal severance of a legal institution would look like in the eyes of god; wondered if god even existed to allow such a tumultuous affair in to both of their lives. his spirit of eminence would be the reason for not sigining the papers in the future, and she would once again fall to obey in his household of tyranny.
rising from the dinner table, he incisively stated, "i'm leaving."
in simply refusing to recuse, as a smaller woman may have done, she sensed the vicissitude of his nature; a chance to escape.