Pink Lemonade

The band tightens round my chest.
Pink lemonade trickling down, coming to a gurgling standstill when it hits the kink in the band.
The liquid, like acid, zigzagging on a helter skelter through my ribs, blackening the bones like a marshmallow on a stick.
I wait for it to pass, encouraging thoughts of anything but the pain, emphatically stressing how good the pie tastes, when you feel like you’re chewing on cardboard, choking on the corrugation as it sticks in my craw.
With each mouthful, chewing his words, chewing his actions, chewing up my past hopes and dreams as they disintegrate in to a bitter sweet pudding.
The stodge sits there refusing to budge as each word grows thorns that sprout and embed in to my gums. The spikes finally reach my eyes, as the acid finds an outlet, sizzling as it makes its journey to my lips; the familiar salty taste bringing comfort.
My body crumples,   a foetal curl, protecting my unborn self from the verbal attack.
And then the brief silence- he folds up like a crumpled shirt hanging from a drawer.
The gulp of air, sucked in as the drunken sleep takes hold, exhaling a noise that rattles around the room like thunder.
I slowly uncurl, feeling the acid in my body returning to pink lemonade as my blood starts to boil up to fight his noisy breaths as they pound the walls.
My eyes fix on a familiar picture, but a Polaroid snap floats in my vision of happier times.
His words start sinking to the bottom of his empty glass, full now with my worthlessness and hopelessness.
I scream at him silently and again as it escapes my mouth- he does not wake.
My words sound of throttle as they wrap around his neck where my hands long to rest.
The pink lemonade calls me away as I close the door, until the next time.