Venom

by Bianca Spriggs

I am no longer of the persuasion that people should toss
around the phrase 'dead serious' merely to ensure
they have your full attention. Because to be that serious
means something in you is convinced that at that moment,
you are deadly. I did not know this until a brief but intense
dialogue one night on the phone, about what I might do
with a pistol and some hydrochloric acid if he ever betrayed me.
I could actually feel my eyes turning another color,
taste something new flickering in the saliva beneath my tongue.
But I went way past 'I might have to snatch her up by her scalp,'
to the tranquil madness of knowing exactly what I will do
should the opportunity ever present itself. The next instant
it was almost over. He was laughing. I was laughing.
But our laughs did not sound the same. And they stopped
when I said, I am dead. Serious. Baby. That night, I went to sleep
knowing I am a different sort of woman than my mother.