“I love you,” you say.
      I stop walking. A long breath leaves my lungs before I spin on my heels to meet your eyes. “Yeah,” I say. “You said that already.”
     “I know. It’s still true.”
      When you struggle like I do, when teams of guidance counselors have been doing psychological damage control since before the last of your baby teeth had even had the chance to vacate the premises, you’re taught - exhaustively - about body language. About how to discern the feelings of another based solely on their demeanor. In my weekly childhood social skills sessions, I had referred to the practice as mind reading. “Are we reading minds today?” I would ask by way of greeting each time I entered the little comfy room of talking. Ten-year-old me found the label appropriate; after all, these alleged “non-verbal cues” seemed to me just about as accessible as a person’s unspoken thoughts.
     Having struggled with the intricacies of social interaction all my life, I myself never bothered tossing such hints into the breeze. I never sat in stony silence hoping someone else would have the discretion necessary to extract my complete emotional profile from nothing. I took special care to make myself clear. Because why wouldn’t I? Why would I deal in code and smoke signals and pray to be understood when I had the entirety of the English language at my disposal? I learned, of course, as I grew older, that supplementary physical displays never go amiss in expressing a point. In fact, they serve as valuable reinforcement. Like now. Your face when my fist makes contact with your gut. In addition to delivering immense satisfaction, it aids tremendously in the communication process.
     “You…” I scoff, roll my eyes for good measure. I want you to feel as idiotic as you sound. “You’re not stupid, so you must be antagonizing me, right?”
     You double over, looking up at me in shock. “What?” you gasp. You clutch at your stomach.
     “You’re…” I run my fingers through my hair, pull. Relished in how my scalp stings with the pressure. “...infuriating.”
     “Babe, I…”
     Key to the decryption of body language is the ability to recognize and associate certain cues with specific moods or emotions. Some are cartoonishly obvious, like clenched jaws and raised voices. Those are the kind of signals they put on coloring pages. Others are more subtle, trickier to pick out. But they are there, and just as crucial.
     “What do you mean?” Your voice drips with false innocence, very nearly stimulating my gag reflex in the process. “Please. I mean it when I say I love you.”
     The sound I make is best described as a growl.
     “Baby…”
     Anger can be outwardly expressed in a variety of ways. Anything from an irritated click of the tongue to a guttural scream can be indicative of that tricky little infectious agent we call rage. Fifth-grade, mind-reader-in-training me always preferred anger to the other emotions, mostly because angry minds were so easy to read. The signs that angry people display are bright, neon, flashing. Pure, undiluted anger is impossible to miss.
     Yet, here you stand, succeeding at that very feat. “Look, I know I screwed up,” you say, all earnest and dewy-eyed. Sometimes anger is so severe it can induce nausea, I remember reading. Maybe that explains the feeling in my stomach. Or maybe that’s just you. Maybe you’re just nauseating by nature. “And I know you don’t believe me right now, but I do, I do love you, and if you would just give me a chance to pr - “
     “Let me ask you something.”
     “Anything.”
      I place my hands on my hips, jut my chin forward. “In any other case, in... any other situation, do you go around saying things on the basis that they’re true?”
     “I… what?” I’m throwing you for a loop.
     “You don’t walk the streets reminding everyone you meet that Columbus’ voyage took place in 1492, or that Michael Jackson’s top-grossing single was Billy Jean.” My face grows red. “You don’t because those things are irrelevant. They’re true, but they have no place whatsoever in conversation.” My back goes stiff and rigid. My words pick up steam, gaining heat as they barrel through my compromised inhibitions. “You wait until something matters before you say it. Otherwise you’re just a crazy, babbling stranger with a solid foundation of 80’s pop-rock knowledge, an elementary-level proficiency in U.S. history, and no idea how to behave like a functioning human being.”
     “Baby,” you say, and my fists clench as the muscles in my jaw flex. “What are you saying? Help me understand.”
     My guidance counsellors, and all the subsequent therapists, didn’t see the interpretation of body language as mind-reading. They told me I wasn’t reading minds, I was reading street signs. Traffic lights, speed bumps, stop signs, keep right signs, do not pass signs. No one verbally tells you when to behave a certain way on the road, they would tell me. Or if they do, it’s because they’re angry, because you’ve already made a mistake. The trick is to see far enough into the future to avoid making mistakes in the first place. I often wondered at their choice of analogy, given that my experience operating motor vehicles was somewhat limited at that point. Still, I understood what they were trying to tell me. You can’t rely on people to tell you what to do. You’re expected to read the street signs.
     If your blatant disregard for my present behavior is any indication, you’re doing a piss-poor job of that. “I am saying,” I hiss, “you don’t say stuff until it matters. And you loving me? Doesn’t.”
     What happens when you don’t read the street signs, Amelia? Mrs. Krech asked me one time, sitting cross-legged on the scratchy carpet of a small administrative room located deep in the endless maze that was elementary school guidance department. Her carefully manicured nails played idly with the toy cars she had fished out for the occasion. What happens when there’s a bright red stop sign right there, right in front of you, and you zoom right on by?
     I replied that I die, Mrs. Krech. If I can’t read the signs, I die.
     “Baby, come on, please listen to me.” My breathing grows shorter, faster.
     Mrs. Krech chuckled. No, honey. You don’t die. But you make mistakes. You interrupt the flow of the conversation, just like bad drivers can interrupt the flow of traffic. And that, sweetheart, can make it more difficult to make friends. I wracked my brain for all the street signs I had encountered. There were the mundane ones, like “stop” and “yield” and “one way.” The more colorful selections came from cartoons. “Warning,” the most dramatic ones declared. “Cliff ahead.” Maybe Mrs. Krech didn’t know what she was talking about, but if you couldn’t read that sign, then yeah, I was pretty sure you died.
     “I know that what I did was wrong, okay? I know that I hurt you. But I am willing to do anything -- anything -- to make it up to you. That’s a promise, okay?” I feel my arms and upper body tethered by the creeping paralysis of rage as you grip my shoulders and lean in close. One last warning. One last sign.
     “Get,” I say, my upper lip almost invisible above my bared teeth, “off of me.”
     “That,” you insist like a deaf man, “is a promise.”
     It was always the really stupid villains,  so hopelessly entangled in the thrill of the chase, who couldn’t be bothered to so much as glance at any one of the passing warning signs as they approached the precipice. They were the ones who would drive off the edge, hover in the air for a split second as realization dawned on them, then plummet to earth with a howl.
    You’re the one who refuses to read my “stop, you bloody imbecile” signs at every turn. I can’t be responsible for keeping you alive, any more than gravity can be responsible for keeping that stupid villain from his sudden end. And when someone’s burning alive from the anger within them, you can only expect her to hold out for so long before plunging herself into icy reprieve. 
    As I burn through the last reserves of my self-control, my fingers, itching from the boiling hot blood running through my veins, finally find relief in the shallow indentures of your throat.
     

     You struggle. My fingers, they delight in the thrums and  vibrations of your little squeaks and splutters. I push you back. You fall to the ground -- gravity’s doing -- and I sit atop a chest that has ceased to rise and fall -- my own doing. Rather than cooling and leaching from my blood as you begin to convulse, the fire is fed. Except that now, it poses no threat. It doesn’t burn me. It is a furnace, and it is my life-force.
     Your own hands wander up, scrambling half-heartedly to relieve the pressure on the airway that supplies them precious oxygen. I easily resist their feeble attempts. My eyes move from your throat to your face. The surprise in your eyes has matured into the appropriate level of fear. Intoxicating. I am intoxicated. More intoxicated with rage than I’ve ever been with love.
“Read my mind,” I whisper, grinning. Liquid fire has replaced my blood. I am a god. “Read my mind. How much do I care that you love me?”
     The spluttering has stopped. The struggling has died down. I’m flooded with disappointment as you twitch into total stillness.
Exhausted and breathing heavily as the liquid fire finally cools into submission, I slump off of your empty body. In this room, it is as though the world has been vacated. There is nothing left, save for peace.
     I lay back, smile. My smile grows larger until it overflows into a giggle, then laughter. I laugh until I’m noisily  convulsing on the floor, just like you were only minutes ago, and the thought makes me laugh harder. “Read my mind,” I gasp. “How much do I care?” I’m submerged into a fit of giggles again, and I get the odd sense that the all-consuming peace resents my presence. That the universe takes offense at my complexities. That’s okay. I feel myself steadily dissolving into the empty space, and the sound of laughter subsides, in turn. I shut my eyes.
     “Read my mind.”