Bitter

The air conditioner’s kind of wack right now, bursting gusts of air that sound especially like waves galloping towards the beach.

My brother and I haven’t really had the best relationship. His words are sometimes laced with arsenic and his mischievousness often crosses into cruelty, doling insults in my direction without a single prompt from my end.

We’ve had our fair share of laughs and arguments; it’s the back-talks that get to me.

Just this morning, I woke to a chilly room and white noise hazing my mind. I made out a voice in the background of my sleepy chaos… whose was it, my brother’s, curling his forked tongue and spitting venom into the air.

I prickled my ears and furrowed my brows to make sense of what he was saying. “9am…”, “不会去做” and an assortment of colourful adjectives describing me… I rolled my eyes in disgust of his scathing words, flipped my pillow and went back to awaiting the alarm.

An hour later when I left the house, I tottered outside and felt the white noise crackle in intensity and my brows furrow again; I pushed the door open, enough for him to see the annoyance form wrinkles in my forehead and spat, “Next time you want to talk shit about me, do it in my face.”

I made my way downstairs, my fingers wrapped tightly around the ball keychain, and the noise was yet to leave.

When I came back, mom saw my tired eyes and tried to assure me that his scathing tone was only because he was hotly arguing with her (like that would reassure me). I held my upper lip raw and told her that this backstabbing had been once too many.

We haven’t spoken yet, he didn’t watch the TV with us today.

If it’s his fault…why do I keep looking in his direction and hoping that nothing’s changed?