The Start of Resentment

by Kristen Tsetsi

It's lonelier when he sleeps, when I imagine him not conscious. Four more hours, or so, until his alarm goes off, if he does indeed wake up at five. Five sounds right, sounds good. He wrote in his letter that he was up for sunrise, but maybe he was awake before that, since he was already drinking coffee at the time, sitting on the makeshift porch he'd built outside of his sand-dusted tent in Mosul. Jake (tick) Jake (tick) Jake (tick) Jake (tick). Not his face, not memories, but the name, repeating and repeating like a compulsive twitch, a skipping lyric, and I whisper - to the air that just might someday reach him - "Sick, sick, sick of you."

6S

The Start of Resentment is an excerpt from Kristen Tsetsi's novel, Homefront. Kristen also gave us Trial Separation, and links to more of her work can be found at her website.