Over Lunch, She Tries to Tell Them

by Chanel Sutherland

and the glasses sweat into the table and the forks scrape porcelain and the air swells with the smell of butter and basil and someone is laughing and someone is saying god, I needed this today and she tries to say it but the words stick to her teeth and she chews them down with her Caesar salad and the bread is warm and the wine is sweet and his fist left bruised constellations in the drywall, craters where love should have been, a language punched into plaster, unreadable, but still there, the house still mouths its warnings and she says he always held my wrist too tight and they blink, pause mid-sip, mid-bite, someone swipes gloss off their lip with the back of their hand, someone says but you never said anything before and the room shrinks and the knives gleam too sharp and the waiter refills water and the teenage girls in the booth behind her giggle too loudly, their laughter rising like bubbles and she says it wasn’t always bad and someone nods like they’ve solved it, says every marriage is hard and she thinks of the sound of mugs shattering, how the walls still remember their breaking, how she had folded into corners like lint, a body learning how to be less, how to take up less, and someone says but he loves you and someone says but he’s such a good guy and someone says you can’t call that abuse and she wants to say the house does, it still breathes him, still flinches when the door slams, still holds the scent of vodka in its wooden ribs, the floorboards creak in the pattern of his pacing and a voice from behind the counter shouts one turkey club, extra mayo, and she wonders if her pain is something smeared on too thick, something easy to scrape away and she is drowning in words that slap her wrists, pull at her skin, press her back into the chair, maybe they’re right, she’s just being dramatic, so she reaches for her glass of red wine and drinks, and someone is already changing the subject and someone is asking for the cheque and someone is laughing and someone is saying god, I needed this today

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ABOUT THE CREATOR

Chanel Sutherland is a Vincentian Canadian writer of fiction, poetry and creative nonfiction. She won the 2021 CBC Nonfiction Prize and the 2022 CBC Short Story Prize and was named one of CBC Books 30 Writers to Watch in 2022. Chanel is also the overall winner of the 2025 Commonwealth Short Story Prize. She has a BA in English literature from Concordia University and lives in Montreal, Quebec. Her first collection of short stories, titled LAYAWAY CHILD, is out now from House of Anansi.

Instagram: @csutherwrites

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