This Doesn't Feel Like Home

“If it ain’t broke don’t fix it”, she says, while beating eggs in the kitchen. She’s referring to my idea to paint the coffee table blue.
“So you like the coffee table as it is?”
“Well, I think it’s fine. No reason to paint it”

To break eye contact with her I look at her nose. It is a small nose with a little bump in the middle. I move my attention around her face and look at her ears. She’s wearing earrings that look like tusks.

I love this woman but she doesn’t understand me. She doesn’t understand why I need to do things like this. Painting the coffee table. Cause living in this city is killing me. Not having a job. Wasting away my afternoons on the porch with stolen cigarettes and tap water and stray cats for company. We’ve been here for 3 months and I have yet to even get an interview. Restaurants, movie theatres, coffee shops. All have turned me down. This is why I like making things, painting things. To feel productive. To feel useful.

She repeats “no reason to paint it” like a mantra. We said a city would never break us but I don’t know how much more of this I can take.
All we ever do is fight. All we ever seem to do is say “I’m sorry”. This doesn’t feel like home.