Hell Hath No Fury

2 a.m. A crash jolts me awake. I rush downstairs to find my daughter smashing her live-in boyfriend's TV set with a hammer. While I'm trying to figure out what led to this, she starts shattering his DVDs.

"You want to know why?" she screams. "I work and pay for the groceries, and he buys new clothes and DVDs." She grabs scissors and starts shredding his shirts.

"I gave and gave," she says while hauling his belongings out the front door and dumping them on the lawn. She spews out a litany of complaints: he didn't do his share of the housework; he didn't pay his share of the bills; he wasn't motivated to get unstuck from his dead-end job; he had started smoking and doing drugs again; he was sulky and wouldn't talk to her; he never wanted to do anything.

Finally, she sits on our porch, sobbing: "I found out that he's been cheating on me for two years."

How does the man who cheated on her mother help her through this?

evening rain
missing especially
the long lost kitten

published in Simply Haiku